Corey Seager extended his hitting streak to a season-best 10 games on Wednesday night but was removed in the bottom of the third inning because of tightness in his left hamstring. The Los Angeles Dodgers maintained the decision was out of precaution rather than severity of the injury.
It nonetheless caused some immediate concern as Seager spent one month on the injured list this season because of a strained left hamstring. Similar to his stretch now, that injury came as the 25-year-old had settled into a groove at the plate.
Including the 6-4 win over the San Diego Padres, Seager has started in each of the Dodgers’ 20 games in September. That streak is set to end in Thursday’s series finale at Petco Park.
Although, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts downplayed any concern over Seager’s hamstring trouble and predicted he would be back in the lineup when the team’s road trip continues against the San Francisco Giants, as seen on SportsNet LA:
“Corey had a little left hamstring tightness. Obviously, he’s had a history of it. Nothing alarming. We wanted to get ahead of it, get him out of the game. He’ll be down tomorrow and back in there on Friday. He noticed it, I think on the double. He kind of legged it out and felt it a little bit. I appreciate the honesty of giving us a heads up. He said he could continue but we wanted to be precautionary.”
Seager is fresh off being named National League Player of the Week for the first time in his career, earning recognition after a productive stretch during the period of Sept. 16-22. He went 10-for-20 with two doubles, one triple, one home run, seven RBI and a 1.000 slugging percentage over five starts over that span.
“The last week and a half to two weeks, I just see (Seager hitting to) the middle of the field,” Roberts said this week. “Whether it’s right-center to center, hitting the flat groundball or the left-center double, he’s covering a lot of different pithes.
“He hit a homer a couple nights ago on a breaking ball, today left-on-left, took a couple good breaking balls down below and then got a pitch he could handle and hit it to right-center. He’s just taking really good at-bats.
“When guys stay to he big part of the field a lot of good things can happen. We’ll really riding him.”
Although the expectation is for Seager to be back in the lineup Friday, the Dodgers will readily err on the side of caution if he continues to experience any sort of discomfort.
The team will face the Wild Card winner in Game 1 of the NL Division Series on Thursday, Oct. 3.
