Dodgers: Corey Seager quietly heating up at opportune moment

In his third full MLB season, Corey Seager has not been at his best. Really, he has helped the Dodgers less in 2019 than in any of his other full seasons.

Sure he hasn’t been worthy of any awards, but the Dodgers have Bellinger to do that right now, and Turner has been no slouch at the dish either.

This season, besides posting his lowest batting average, OBP, SLG, and home run total have been all been positives for Seager simply because he’s back on the field, playing baseball at a fairly high level. But don’t be too alarmed, the still young shortstop has something left to give in October, and he’s already started to make good on that potential in recent times.

But even over the full season, Seager still has the best full-season strikeout rate of his career and is just eight RBI away from tying his career-high in 200 fewer at-bats. Even if his WAR is almost just a third of what it was in his first two seasons on average, he still is helping the team by balancing the lineup.

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Seager and his 14 home runs present a solid alternative to the all-or-nothing approach the home run happy Dodgers have employed in 2019. His 39 doubles lead the Dodgers (he has nine more than the next closest teammate Cody Bellinger) and place him one under his career-best mark of 40 he set with nearly 200 more ABs.

A big part of the problem has been a lack of barrels and hard-hit balls. He ranks below average in stats like barrels per plate appearance and hard-hit rate and is even below his brother Kyle Seager in those stats.

Recently though, he’s even begun to improve in those areas hurting him early in the season, like power and average. In the Giants series, Seager only pulled two balls in classic Corey fashion and hit seven balls harder than his season average, including a home run off Dereck Rodriguez he belted 101.1 mph. In the Saturday night game, Seager had every single ball he hit leave the bat faster than his season average.

Even if the results did not translate until the Sunday home run, Seager is on the right track. Just be patient and let one of baseball’s calmest young stars keep doing his thing against the Baltimore Orioles this week, one of the best teams in baseball to hit against.