The last few years have been rough for Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager after dealing with a few different injuries, including undergoing Tommy John and hip surgeries in 2018.
Seager went into the 2020 season finally 100% healthy and his play on the field reflected that. There was a minor bump in the road as back trouble forced Seager to miss a brief stretch of games, but he quickly picked up hitting upon returning.
The 26-year-old recently attributed his success to having a healthy offseason to get back to being the player that he was pre-injury. “I just feel good in general,” Seager recently said. “Whether it’s back to what you were or whatever, I feel really confident in my body and really good getting out there again, being able to do what I want to do.”
Coincidentally, the remarks came hours before he was removed from a game because of the back issue. It was considered minor and played out as such thus far.
One aspect of his game that Seager has been really happy with and hopes he can continue if how hard he has been hitting the ball.
“Obviously you’re really happy with it,” he noted. “It’s a body-confidence thing, just feeling better, feeling stronger, being able to make moves I want to be able to make. It’s showing. Hopefully I can keep it going.”
With so much uncertainty due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic after the season was put on hold near the end of Spring Training, many players took some time off. Not Seager though, as he went straight from Arizona to L.A. and continued his work during the entire shutdown.
“I never stopped. I kept working out, I kept hitting, I kept throwing. I tried to stay as baseball-ready as possible,” he said. “I ran in cleats, I did a lot of running and a lot of things to kind of emulate as much as you can without being in a game. We got out here to the stadium pretty quick, so I got to run bases, I got to take ground balls in cleats, I warmed up in cleats.”
Having an entire healthy offseason, and then essentially another offseason on top of that, has clearly done wonders for Seager in 2020.
Seager succeeding from change in approach
One of the reasons Seager had a bit of a down year in 2019, by his standards, was because he was chasing a lot of first pitches out of the strike zone.
While he is being more aware of that this season, taking more pitches, he still is ready to go after that first pitch if he believes it’s hittable.
“It’s something I’ve always done. You have certain guys where you’re not as aggressive, certain moments when you’re not as aggressive, but just in general you’re up there ready to hit,” he explained.
“These guys in this league are pretty good. You never know when the best pitch is going to be the first, the second, the fifth. Just kind of have to be ready at all times.”
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