Corey Seager became the third member of the Los Angeles Dodgers to earn National League Player of the Week honors this season, garnering recognition for the period of Sept. 16-22. Cody Bellinger (March 31-April 7) and Hyun-Jin Ryu (May 6-12) previously earned honors.
Seager went 10-for-20 with two doubles, one triple, one home run, seven RBI and a 1.000 slugging percentage over five starts during the week he was recognized for. He’s in the midst of an eight-game hitting streak and has multi-hit performances in each of the past six contests and seven of eight.
Seager’s 21 hits, one triple, six home runs and 21 RBI lead the Dodgers during the month of September. His RBI total additionally is best in the NL over that span.
“The last week and a half to two weeks, I just see (Seager hitting to) the middle of the field,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Sunday. “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.”
After shaking off some rust in returning from last year’s Tommy John and hip surgeries, Seager suffered a strained hamstring in the middle of June. He missed nearly one month and upon coming off the 10-day injured list went through another rough patch.
A four-game hitting streak in the middle of July signaled some turnaround, and Seager also had separate stretches of six and four consecutive games with a hit.
Overall this season Seager is batting .273/.336/.478 with 41 doubles, 18 home runs and 82 RBI; he’s already set career highs in doubles and RBI.
Seager seemingly is peaking as the Dodgers are poised to begin a seventh consecutive postseason appearance. He missed the team’s run to the World Series last year and therefore took added satisfaction and enjoyment with contributing to this season’s NL West title.
