Dodgers clear favorites for Corey Seager and timeline could surprise you

Get ready, Dodgers fans. You might get Corey Seager dropped through your chimney before you’ve even had a chance to decorate the tree.

According to Ken Rosenthal’s latest collection of league-wide notes for The Athletic (subscription required), fans’ early-offseason worries about the Yankees’ Seager pursuit may have been completely misguided. The Rangers? Well, they seem to be targeting hometown boy Trevor Story. Nothing to worry about there.

The Rangers and Clayton Kershaw? That sounds like a dead end, too.

What team would you rather be than the Dodgers right now? A month ago, this offseason felt like a challenge. Now, it seems obvious we’re going to retain all our free agents (except, uh, Chris Taylor), which is half the battle.

There’s still plenty of work to do, and the rotation/bench depth is in a far worse place than in our idealized visions from pre-2021. We’re not resting on our laurels.

In the case of Seager, though, we’ve gone from staring at the Yankees’ glaring need and getting resigned to his departure to sitting in the driver’s seat, once again showing that team from New York how a big-budget baseball market is supposed to act.

Dodgers Rumors: LAD are the favorites to sign Corey Seager.

According to Rosenthal, we’ve got a wealth of happy hints here:

1. The Yankees aren’t exploring the top shortstop options anymore.
2. The Dodgers are the favorites in the Seager chase (which is why they’d … avoid Freddie Freeman, we guess?).
3. Seager wants to get a deal done quickly, ahead of the likely Dec. 1 lockout.

Great! We’re on board for all of it! The 2020 NLCS and World Series MVP belongs in Los Angeles long-term. He’s a face of the franchise. We cultivated him and watched him blossom. If he does need to move to third base eventually, we’ll have a vacancy there for him to fill a few years down the line. As long as we bring back Trea Turner, too, everything is in its place.

And, if a positional transition does eventually have to take place, wouldn’t you rather that news be broken by your longtime organization, which you’re comfortable with, rather than some cabal of Yankees outsiders forcing you to third against your will? I thought so.

This is all a far cry from just one week ago, when Jon Heyman (set up by Scott Boras) foretold a Dodgers-Yankees clash for the ages over Seager.

As it turns out, that might’ve been spoon fed to drive competition up, and it doesn’t appear to have worked.

The Yankees are content to sit this one out, and Seager’s content to put his name on the dotted line before the holidays.

5 teams most likely to steal Chris Taylor from the Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers can only do so much in free agency and they might end up losing Chris Taylor to one of these five teams.