MLB

Just How Good Is Corey Seager?

John Stolnis  —  @johnstolnis Sep 15th, 2015
The rookie shortstop has been red-hot since joining the Dodgers earlier this month.

Ah, the promise of youth. When you're young, your whole future is in front of you, the world is your oyster. 

This is just in true in baseball as it is in life. It's why general managers have taken to hoarding young prospects like that guy with the four-inch fingernails who lives down the street and has a house filled with used cardboard paper roll dispensers and TV Guides. During this year's trade deadline, the Dodgers steadfastly refused to trade any of their top prospects for a starting pitcher like Cole Hamels or David Price because they loved the promise of their young players.

Corey Seager is proving that sometimes hoarding prospects is the right thing to do.

Since joining the Dodgers earlier this month, Seager is batting .432 with an on-base percentage of .543 and a slugging percentage of .676. In 11 starts, Seager has at least one hit in 10 of those games, with one homer, six doubles, seven RBI and nine runs scored, putting up a walk rate of 17.4% along the way.

His left-handed swing is really something else.


He's reached base in 25 in his 46 plate appearances so far this year. There's a reason the guy came into the season as a consensus top-seven prospect in all of baseball. 

Seager's addition has certainly upgraded the Dodgers at shortstop, where Jimmy Rollins was having the worst season of his career. His slash line of .220/.279/.355 is abysmal, with a weighted on base average (wOBA) of .279, a weighted runs created (wRC+) of 76, and a nERD of -1.26 that essentially means Rollins is 1.26 runs a game worse than a league average player. His fWAR of -0.2 is already far worse than Seager's 1.0, which the rookie has done in just 11 games.

That would equate to an fWAR of 14.7 over a 162-game schedule. Fun with WAR!

His hot start is interesting given that he had been having a down year for him in the minors. In his first taste at Triple-A this season, Seager hit .278/.332/.451 for a .783 OPS with 13 homers and 61 RBI, with 65 strikeouts and 32 walks in 464 plate appearances. That's a far cry from the .349/.402/.602 slash line and 1.004 OPS between High-A and Double-A in 2014. Of course, he's just 21 years old, and a .783 OPS in Triple-A, which is pretty doggone good. And minor league statistics are often misleading anyway.

Seager is expected to take over as the team's shortstop next season, and when he makes plays like this, you can see why.


Most see Seager as being a third baseman in the Majors, long-term. But whether it's shortstop or third, his ability to hit will assure him that he's playing somewhere out there.

As the Dodgers look ahead to the postseason, they have to be excited about what their young rookie is giving them at the plate. Considering the Dodgers have been no-hit twice already this season, and were getting nothing from Rollins at shortstop, the addition of Seager could help them out tremendously with postseason baseball right around the corner.

NLCS MVP Corey Seager? Just maybe.