In his first season coming off two major surgeries — elbow and hip — Corey Seager has not yet resembled the player the Los Angeles Dodgers saw win the 2016 National League Rookie of the Year and two Silver Sluggers.
That in some part was to expected considering he missed almost a full year, but there perhaps was an unreasonable bar set when Seager hit a home run in his first Spring Training game and also went deep on Opening Day.
Since then though, Seager has really struggled. In 40 games this season, he is hitting .225/.325/.341 with two home runs and 12 RBI. In his last 15 games, he is just 7-for-51 (.137 batting average) and gone hitless in nine of those.
While Seager has yet to find a rhythm, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is hardly concerned. “I think that’s completely fair,” Roberts said if Seager’s slow start was to be expected.
“You’re taking at-bats in Spring Training but there’s a different intensity and also, Corey, his body, the levers, the hip, the elbow, everything has changed with surgery. So now you’ve got the body composition, the mechanics, timing, all that stuff. You look at the player and you expect him to just go out there and roll out big numbers but it’s not that easy.”
Roberts added he believes Seager will soon break out of his slump. “I don’t think it’s going to be much longer, to be quite honest with you. When he stays in the strike zone, which he’s getting better at, there’s going to be a lot of good things happening,” he said.
“I think right around now to 150 (plate appearances), he’s got his feet wet and it’ll really start to turn. I do think there’s some times that he potentially could’ve released the barrel and hit it to the pull side. But I think there’s a conscious effort to probably stay to the big part of the field.”
Throughout the course of a 162-game season, every player is going to have points where they struggle. For Seager, it just happened to be at the start of the season so it gets highlighted more.
Seager is as capable as any hitter of going on a month-long tear where he is the best hitter in the league. Whether or not that will come remains to be seen, but Roberts believes that Seager won’t stop until he gets there.
“He’s always working. He’s a perfectionist.”
