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Following a simulated scrimmage at Crowder C.C. on Saturday, Dylan Carter received the call he’d been hoping for.
Arkansas assistant Nate Thompson was on the phone to offer the right-hander an opportunity to come back home and pitch for the Razorbacks.
“It’s been a dream of mine since I was probably 7, 8 years old to play for the Hogs,” Carter said. “I talked to my mom and was like, ‘I can’t pass this up because it’s been a dream of mine.’”
Carter, who lived in Fort Smith until moving to Bentonville when he was 10 and graduated from Bentonville West in 2019, needed only about three hours before calling Thompson back and letting him know his decision.
He announced his commitment to the Razorbacks late Saturday night. They were his first offer in junior college, but several Big 12 and SEC schools had shown interest in the hard-throwing right-hander who blew up over the summer.
After posting an 8.64 ERA with seven walks and seven strikeouts in 8 1/3 innings across three appearances as a freshman during the coronavirus-shortened 2020 season, Carter dominated for the Arkansas Sticks’ 19U team.
He went 4-1 with two saves while posting a 1.37 ERA with a whopping 55 strikeouts in just 27 innings. Part of the turnaround was due to being fully recovered from an elbow injury suffered last fall that lingered into January, but Carter also credited a newfound focus during quarantine.
“I wasn’t really focused mentally and then whenever COVID canceled everything, I sat down and told myself that I’ve got to get after it,” Carter said. “I really focused from that spring through the summer, getting in the weight room and working hard, throwing consistently, just working on myself.”
The goal was to go somewhere following his sophomore year at Crowder and he’s accomplished that with his commitment to Arkansas.
However, with his velocity now in the mid-90s - more on that below - and expectations that he’ll be one of the Roughriders’ top arms this spring, there’s a chance an MLB team takes a chance on Carter in next summer’s draft. For now, though, he’s looking forward to fulfilling a childhood dream.
“I haven’t thought of (the draft) a whole lot just yet, but as we get later on into it, later into the fall and the spring whenever the season comes, I’ll start thinking about it more,” Carter said. “But right now, I want to go and be an Arkansas Razorback.”
To get a better feel for what kind of player Arkansas is getting, HawgBeat also reached out to Crowder C.C. head coach Travis Lallemand for a scouting report on Carter…
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(For a complete list of Arkansas’ baseball commitments in the 2021, 2022 and 2023 classes, as well as updates, clips and links to other scouting reports on the recruits, click here.)
Dylan Carter - Class of 2021
Position: Right-handed pitcher
School: Crowder C.C. (HS: Bentonville West)
Height: 6-2 | Weight: 190 | B/T: R/R
Other offers/interest: No offers, but interest from several Big 12, SEC schools
Aside from the fact they throw with opposite arms, it’s easy to draw comparisons between Carter and another Northwest Arkansas product who went to Crowder C.C. before returning to pitch for the Razorbacks: Jalen Beeks.
“There are some similarities in the fact that Jalen was pretty raw when he got here, just like Dylan,” Lallemand said. “They’re both pretty raw because of light usage.”
While Beeks - a Prairie Grove native - needed only a couple of weeks for his velocity to jump from 84-86 mph to 91-92, allowing him to sign with Arkansas after just one year at Crowder, it’s been a little bit longer of a process for Carter.
The right-hander was a catcher most of his life. Carter said he started pitching as a junior in high school, but it wasn’t until his senior year when he stopped catching and moved first base to preserve his arm and body for his days on the mound.
