-
Jeff Passan, ESPN
THE BASEBALL SWING is a puzzle, an ever-changing riddle. Even for the perfect hitters on the earth, the fragility of the swing is palpable. Each minuscule element issues. Batters usually are not machines, constructed to duplicate the identical motion numerous occasions earlier than they’re changed. They’re human beings aiming to be their most machine-like and grappling with the defect of the endeavor.
Maybe the perfect illustration of this duality belongs to Corey Seager, the shortstop for the reigning World Collection champion Texas Rangers. Seager obsesses over his swing. “I like the method,” he says. “It’s important to take pleasure in it to have the ability to do that, proper?” Now in his 10th main league season, Seager has grown into one of many sport’s most interesting hitters as a lot due to the time he spends fine-tuning his swing because the inherent capacity packed into his 6-foot-4, 215-pound body.
Seager’s left-handed swing is beautiful, rhythmic, elegant even. It’s an aesthetic marvel, its artwork rooted in its science. Seager is a baseball engineer, constructing complicated processes on the fly. Each motion has which means and the top product — the swing — is a one-man symphony.
And but Seager lives with perpetual anxiousness, worrying that for the entire effort and time and vitality he devotes to his swing, it might desert him on the most inopportune second. For the entire offense his swing produces, it exists equally as a protection mechanism. Seager’s infatuation can also be his torment.
“The worry of failure,” he says. “Failure positively drives me greater than anything.”
So the person extensively thought to be probably the most clutch hitter of his technology focuses on probably the most microscopic of particulars. Little invigorates Seager greater than the every day rebuild of his swing. That is the method in motion.
“It takes an aggressive humility to say, ‘I have been a multiple-time World Collection MVP, Rookie of the 12 months and every single day I will begin with a clean state,'” Rangers bench coach Donnie Ecker says. “‘How do I put this factor collectively to be prepared at 7 o’clock?’ What I respect about Corey is there is no guessing. He isn’t prepared to try this.”
Seager understands that his cues are ever-evolving, that swings don’t exist in vacuums. Growing old can degrade them and accidents can contaminate them, and that is all earlier than making an attempt to calibrate them for a pitcher marrying 98 on the nook with a bastard back-foot slider and a tumbling splitter simply to make hitting much more the idiot’s errand. The inherent defensiveness of the batter — each hitter, fairly actually, is beginning on the again foot — forces Seager to vise-grip all the things he can management.
On the cusp of 30 years outdated, Seager is determining who he’s and what he may be. And for all the assistance he receives, all of the assist provided, hitting is finally a solo endeavor. It is simply him and himself, raging in opposition to the worry and looking for the peace of the right swing and issues past.
“There isn’t a worse feeling than being in a nasty spot in a serious league batter’s field,” Seager says. “Figuring out you are in a nasty spot and never with the ability to compete. You are simply by your self. It is an empty, dangerous place to be. You haven’t any likelihood. These guys are method too good. And no person’s coming to save lots of you.”
BEFORE EVERY AT-BAT, Seager finds a mirror. At Globe Life Discipline, he heads for the one subsequent to the batting cage or within the weight room. On the different 29 stadiums round Main League Baseball, Seager is aware of precisely the place he can find one, as a result of it is each bit as necessary to him because the bat he will use on the plate.
When Seager stares into the trying glass, he sees angles. It is much less about arithmetic than about evaluating the psychological snapshot of his most idealized batting stance to how intently he’s reproducing it in that exact second. This varies by the day, even the at-bat. For Seager to be who he aspires to be — the perfect model of himself, which consequently can be the perfect hitter on the planet — he should continually tweak and contort his limbs into the right angles to place himself in a perfect place to punish a baseball.
The mirror is Seager’s muse. He stares at himself with readability, each literal — he is bought 20/12.5 imaginative and prescient — and figurative, the latter born of hundreds of hours finding out the angles and realizing himself higher than any opponent attempting to find a weak spot ever might.
“Even with good imaginative and prescient, if you happen to’re in a nasty spot you are not going to have the ability to dictate your at-bat how I would favor to,” Seager says. “So I’ve realized that it at all times comes again to how I transfer.”
Seager’s essential mirror sits within the hallway at Globe Life. A chunk of white tape adorns its high body. Written on the tape is a message: “I am right here that will help you look good & transfer good. Please do not break me.” Rangers hitters retreat from the dugout to partake of it, none with fairly the reverence of Seager.
“The mirror,” he says, “doesn’t lie.”
This sort of single-minded focus has helped him ascend to the best rung of one of many sport’s most profitable households. His oldest brother, Kyle, was an All-Star and Gold Glove-winning third baseman with Seattle. The center sibling, Justin, topped out at Double-A within the Mariners group. Kyle was within the midst of his first main league season when the Dodgers selected Seager out of highschool in North Carolina with the 18th choose of the 2012 draft. Promoted to Double-A two years later after wrecking the decrease minor leagues, Seager linked up with then-Dodgers minor league hitting coach Shawn Wooten, a fortuitous pairing that refined his ample uncooked expertise.
In Wooten, a six-year huge leaguer, Seager discovered a kindred spirit. Seager’s obsessiveness will not be restricted to his swing. All the pieces in his orbit has a selected place and if one thing will not be the place it belongs it eats at him.
“It is helped me in my occupation to be OCD” — Seager makes use of the time period colloquially, not clinically — “and have issues lined up precisely how I want them to be,” he says. “The way in which he might break it down — put me in several segments of the swing, totally different factors, totally different elements — is what actually clicked with me. Give me how it should go, what you want at that time and let me do it and determine it out. And that is the place it actually clicked for us.”
Seager’s early work with Wooten consumed him, even on the oddest occasions. Within the minor leagues, Seager lived with present Oakland A’s right-hander Ross Stripling and Stripling’s future spouse, Shelby. As soon as, when Seager and Shelby have been consuming breakfast, he stood up from the desk, handed her his cellphone and requested her to take video of him pantomiming a swing. The boundaries of swing enlightenment are anchored to neither place nor time. When Seager takes video of himself, Stripling says, “it appears like he is doing nothing, however to him he is doing one thing so necessary.”
Previous to video games, Seager nonetheless meanders by the clubhouse with a bat in a single hand and a cellphone related to a tripod within the different — a digital complement to his analog mirror — scrutinizing clips of his swing and evaluating them to others in a library that spans his minor league days to the current. Optimizing a swing is a continuing fireplace drill and any instrument that proves efficient finds its place in Seager’s routine.
Seager and Wooten discuss every single day, talking a language international to even different huge leaguers. The nomenclature issues as a result of Seager makes use of it to debate with Wooten the place his physique elements belong at specific factors within the swing. Attaining angles is an train in subtlety. When Seager arrives within the field and stares out to the limitless world of outcomes on the sector in entrance of him, he takes his mirror session and tries to duplicate it. He digs his legs into a large base. He cantilevers his proper arm. His first transfer begins earlier than the pitcher releases the ball.
“Go watch a sport and, if you happen to can, watch earlier than he will get his fingers up,” Wooten says. “He simply pushes his hips again and turns his entrance foot in. It is by design to get on the airplane of the pitch.”
Getting on airplane — decreasing the barrel of the bat to the identical degree because the incoming ball — is maybe a very powerful ingredient of the swing to Wooten. To attain that, Seager’s again elbow drops into the slot, tucked towards his physique. His again knee stays beneath his physique to forestall him from lunging. His posture stays upright to permit him to hit excessive, inside fastballs.
Although Seager cues himself to swing down — a long-taught tenet that has fallen out of favor within the period of hitters chasing increased launch angles — he is not truly doing so; it is merely terminology that Wooten discovered permits him to remain on airplane. Seager’s head barely strikes as his hips rotate and the potential vitality constructed by his swing transfers into kinetic vitality when bat meets ball.
“If there’s one factor off,” Wooten says, “it is a huge deal.”
All of it’s in service of avoiding that dangerous spot within the field, when the partitions of a 40,000-seat stadium appear as in the event that they’re caving in, when the pitcher feels far nearer than 60 toes, 6 inches away. Each session within the mirror, each second spent crafting a routine, goes again to that.
“What makes him an outlier that places him within the 1% of the 1% is there is a true obsessive nature about his pursuit of mastery,” Ecker says. “Nothing about that’s going to be relatable. While you’re speaking in regards to the Kobe Bryants and Tom Bradys and Corey Seagers, all the things they do is on the far finish of the spectrum.”
As a lot as Seager research scouting studies and is aware of each pitcher’s arsenal, he sees that data as secondary to his swing. The final word in management is the capability to eradicate variables, and fairly than achieve this by guessing what pitch is coming subsequent Seager cuts out one aspect of the equation altogether, a uncommon strategy as a result of so few have the talent to tug it off.
“That complete query of would you fairly know what’s coming or have the right swing,” he says, “I am choosing the right swing each single time.”
DIFFERENT INCARNATIONS OF Seager have manifested by the years. There was the thin, pliable child who arrived within the main leagues at 21 and in 2016 gained Rookie of the 12 months. The maturing masher who when he was wholesome did unbelievable issues — his opposite-field World Collection house run off Justin Verlander in 2017, punctuated by an sudden scream of pleasure, stays a defining spotlight of his profession — however struggled to remain on the sector. The in-his-prime star in 2020 who gained his first World Collection MVP after retooling his swing. The beneficiary of a 10-year, $325 million free agent deal from the Rangers, who have been coming off a 66-96 season in 2021. And the newest construct, Seager 5.0, proprietor of a physique that does not transfer prefer it as soon as did and wanted Wooten’s whispering following a disappointing first 12 months in Texas.
By 2023, as a result of Seager had added weight and energy over time, warping his physique into angles he beforehand achieved was not an choice. So going into the season, he saved what he did properly — his again leg — and overhauled the remaining. Ecker realized the language and served as boots on the bottom to translate, forging a partnership with Wooten, now an unbiased hitting coach, that thrived on collaboration and introduced out the perfect in Seager.
“He has the flexibility to check and retest,” Ecker says. “That second iteration is a very powerful half. He’ll stress take a look at it and have the ability to put it again collectively.”
For nearly all of 2023, Seager operated as if he’d solved the puzzle. After lacking six weeks in April and Could with a hamstring harm, he completed the 12 months with profession highs in batting common (.327), slugging proportion (.623), house runs (33) and RBIs (96), regardless of taking part in simply 119 video games. If not for Shohei Ohtani, Seager would have gained the AL MVP award.
After which Seager got here the closest he ever has to an ideal swing, on the excellent time: Recreation 1 of the 2023 World Collection, when he stepped to the plate within the ninth inning, one runner on, down two runs, in opposition to Arizona Diamondbacks nearer Paul Sewald.
Years in the past, Sewald realized accidentally that his low arm slot might ship almost-impossible-to-hit excessive fastballs. The final house run he had issued on a fastball on the high of the strike zone got here Sept. 23, 2021. Certainly conscious that Seager has led MLB in first-pitch-swing proportion for 3 straight years however not eager to fall behind within the rely, Sewald threw a first-pitch fastball. Excessive within the zone, on the inside quarter of the plate, the well-executed providing was designed to induce a swing-and-miss. Over the earlier two years, at-bats that ended on Sewald fastballs as excessive off the bottom as this one — 3.32 toes — had produced six hits, all singles, and a .133 batting common.
Seager hammered the 93.2-mph fastball 418 toes into the right-field stands, stared into the Rangers’ dugout and emitted a primal scream.
“I used to be watching the World Collection,” his former Dodgers teammate and shut buddy Justin Turner says, “and it was like, ‘Oh my god, he Verlander-ed him.'”
Seager says he doesn’t keep in mind something in regards to the house run, and as unbelievable as that sounds — an iconic second for the world was fleeting for the one who made it — his buddies and teammates consider him. They see what he turns into in October. The tunnel imaginative and prescient. The eye to element on each play. If in-season Seager is targeted, postseason Seager by no means lapses — not on the plate, not within the subject, not on the bases.
“I do not keep in mind lots of the playoffs,” he says. ” it means extra, so you might be extra targeted. You are making an attempt to make it the identical sport, however actually the ambiance, all the things else — I do not keep in mind sure performs, I do not keep in mind sure sequences of the sport. You might have bits and items that you simply keep in mind. And particularly on homers, I’ve flashbacks of sure facets of it, however there’s lots of ’em I do not even keep in mind what occurred. It is form of loopy. It sucks. I want I remembered.”
Seager’s propensity to satisfy any second, any scenario, any pitcher is incomes him hallowed firm. Final October, he hit .318/.451/.682 with six house runs, together with three in opposition to the Diamondbacks en path to his second World Collection MVP. He joined Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson as the one two-time winners. Loads of individuals in baseball see him because the modern-day model of Derek Jeter — and Seager is just one postseason house run away from tying the New York Yankees captain regardless of taking part in in half as many playoff video games. Since 2020, among the many 82 gamers with at the very least 15 postseason video games, Seager has probably the most house runs (16) and RBIs (38, tied with Houston’s Yordan Alvarez) and the second-most runs and hits.
“That is the place I wish to be,” Seager says. “You alter, you adapt, you study. However I do not know if you happen to ever get sufficient, particularly within the postseason.”
For Seager, the names, the comparisons, the accolades — they land with all of the affect of a snowflake hitting the pavement. He considers the thought of being clutch and believes there’s one thing to it, nevertheless it’s nothing innate, he thinks, not one thing he was fortunate sufficient to have inherited. It is a constructive consequence of his course of, the routine of which permits him to take benefit at any time — together with, sure, these most opportune.
“He would not give a f— who’s on the mound,” Stripling says. “He would not care if it is Jacob deGrom or the final starter within the huge leagues. It’s see ball, hit ball. He is simply terrible to face.”
When Seager was filming movies at Stripling’s breakfast desk, Turner was remaking his personal profession with the Dodgers, and the 2 later bonded over their deal with routine. Now, in some ways, the scholar has exceeded the mentor. They’re friends, distinctive hitters each, and so they share that knack for October that Turner believes goes past their capacity to swing the bat with nice conviction in moments that crumble lesser gamers.
“Clutch is misconceived because the three-run homer,” says Turner, 39, now the Toronto Blue Jays’ designated hitter. “It is exhausting as a result of just one man perhaps even will get that chance in a sport to have that clutch second. The place are you able to determine clutch in a sport all through plate appearances when that second will not be current. A facet of clutch is being ready and being assured within the work you’ve got accomplished to place you able of confidence whenever you’re in these moments. Guys in all probability get out of character within the huge moments if they don’t seem to be as ready or as assured and so they’re making an attempt to do an excessive amount of in these areas.
“He is ready. There’s lots of assured guys, proper? However he believes in his work. He believes in all the things he does going as much as the sport to present him that psychological freedom the place no scenario is just too huge for him. Numerous that is with the ability to discover freedom in your sport — that you simply’re not interested by a mechanic, a scenario. There aren’t any what-ifs. You may get prepared on time and let it rip. When you might have that freedom, you are able to do something.”
ON THE NIGHT he hit the house run off Sewald, Seager returned house and watched a replay. He has not pressed play on the video once more since. The yell doesn’t embarrass him, precisely, however something that generates consideration goes in opposition to his entrenched strategy. Seager is guarded: completely happy to sing the praises of teammates, loath to speak about himself. Little by little, as together with his swing, he is engaged on that, too.
“I do not wish to be within the highlight. I do not wish to be the one who’s talked about. And … it is the place I work,” Seager says. “It took a very long time to get used to. I was tremendous uncomfortable, particularly away from the sector when individuals discover you. It was probably the most uncomfortable factor that might ever occur. I ended leaving [the house]. I ended going out. I ended going to dinner. I simply could not deal with it. After which lastly my spouse form of was like, ‘We now have to exit. We’ll exit. It should be tremendous. You are going to determine it out.'”
He’s slowly studying, nonetheless grappling with the calls for of excellence and the trimmings of fame. As obsessed as Seager is together with his swing — about yearly he’ll fling his bat with anger into the online of a batting cage when he cannot correctly set his angles in his mirror — he is starting to acknowledge what chasing impossibility all this time can unlock in him. It is the muse for all the things else — significantly progress in what he sees past his reflection. There may be peace unbiased of the right swing, contentment amid the worry, even when not in fairly but the identical portions.
“As a lot as I hate the psychological grind, I like entering into there and fixing the puzzle,” Seager says. “I believe that is what attracts me again.”
There is a rising appreciation in Seager for issues past swings, one thing that took years to blossom. On the day of Seager’s debut, Chase Utley, the veteran second baseman, pulled Seager apart and instructed him to treasure the sport and what it has to supply. For Utley, that meant 5 minutes earlier than he stepped onto the sector every single day to stretch, he would stroll into the dugout, sit on the bench and take within the majesty of all of it. Seager, too inexperienced to know the aim of Utley’s routine, did not trouble.
“I by no means actually thought of it for 4 years on why he did it,” Seager says. “After which throughout COVID, truly weirdly sufficient, when no person’s round, is form of once I began. I went on out on the road, form of took my time of simply being there and never eliminating the nerves, however being within the emotion, being in all the things. After which it simply form of goes away.”
