After a promising start to his young career, Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager suffered multiple setbacks this season in the form of significant injuries.
Battling persistent elbow soreness, Seager made the difficult decision in foregoing the remainder of his 2018 campaign to instead, undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery at the turn of May.
Then, it was announced Seager once again went under the knife to repair a tweaked hip. The arthroscopic left hip surgery, deemed successful, was performed by Dr. Bryan Kelly in New York.
Seager is still expected to resume baseball-related activities as early as January, which keeps him on track to potentially return to game action in Spring Training.
Despite undergoing multiple operations this season, Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi continues to view Seager as the club’s longterm shortstop going forward, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“We expect him to make a full recovery. Particularly with the timing of doing it now, being able to resume baseball activity in January – there’s no long-term concerns,” Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi said.
“I think the arm thing happens. It’s something that could be unfortunately a little fluke-ish and maybe more likely at a position where you’re throwing more. So maybe that position adds a little more risk but it’s kind of fluke-ish on the position-player side who has to deal with it. Again, everything we understand about the hip condition and the corrective surgery he’s had, he should make a full recovery. He’s been a good shortstop and should be a good shortstop again.”
At just 24 years old, the Dodgers are optimistic that Seager will be able to return to form and become a mainstay in the middle of the infield for the foreseeable future. To fill the void of Seager at shortstop, they acquired the best possible replacement in Manny Machado from the Baltimore Orioles for a package of five prospects.
Machado will reach free agency at season’s end, so it will be worth keeping an eye on if Seager’s latest surgery alters the club’s approach in potentially re-signing him.
Doing so would require one of the players to change positions, which would also have further repercussions on additional players such as Justin Turner.
