Los Angeles Dodgers: Corey Seager is the MLB’s forgotten superstar

The Los Angeles Dodgers have one of the true superstars in the league in Corey Seager that most MLB fans seem to be forgetting about.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have been successful over the last six seasons and will continue to be successful because of the team’s great farm system. Year after year, the Dodgers churn new faces out of the farm that become some of the best prospects in the MLB.

The best prospect to emerge out of the Los Angeles Dodgers farm system over the last six years is none other than Corey Seager. Seager was the top prospect in all of baseball upon his debut and took no time making an impact on the big league club.

Seager was a September call-up in 2015, replacing Jimmy Rollins as the starting shortstop and hitting .337 with four home runs and 17 RBIs in 27 games. Seager’s inexperience did hurt him in the postseason, as he hit just .188 in the NLDS that year, but it was obvious that the Dodgers had their franchise piece.

Seager went on to slug 26 home runs, drive in 72 RBIs and post a .308 average and .877 OPS in his rookie year to unanimously win the National League Rookie of the Year award. Seager was also an all-star, Silver Slugger and finished third in MVP voting.

Seager’s 2017 was looking strikingly similar as he entered September with a .310 batting average, 19 home runs and 65 RBIs. However, that is when his elbow started to be an issue and he went ice-cold in September, hitting just .210.

Seager still finished the year as an all-star and Silver Slugger and even received some MVP votes, allowed he finished in 17th in the voting.

Fast forward to 2018 and Seager was again off to a relatively slow start to his standards. It was announced at the end of April that Seager would be undergoing Tommy John Surgery and would miss the rest of 2018.

You know the rest: the Dodgers went and got Manny Machado, who certainly left a lot to be desired in the postseason and are now turning the reigns back to Seager.

The only problem is that the league has seemingly forgotten that Seager is one of the MLB’s premier stars.

Last year Seager was the second-highest ranked Dodger on MLB Network’s top-100 players list, coming in as the 18th ranked player. That was one spot higher than AL MVP Mookie Betts and two spots higher than Manny Machado, so it appeared to be a compliment.

If Seager did not get ice-cold at the end of 2017 he likely would have fallen at least in the top-15 and maybe even in the top-10. This time around, he might be ranked even lower.

MLB Network has not aired the top-10 shortstops right now nor the top-100 players list, so we cannot really argue about where Seager is ranked on that list.

However, after being 18 last year and not playing for most of 2018, it is safe to say that Seager will probably be in the 20s. My guess is 23.

Which really is a shame because Seager is going to prove to be one of the five best position players in baseball over the next five years. There are a lot of great players, but Seager will crack the list.

Seager is a guy with 30 home run potential that can drive in 100 runs if the Dodgers hit him third instead of second and can hit in the .320s. He has one of the prettiest swings in baseball and consistently makes hard contact with the ball.

His sophomore slump saw him hit just under .300. Just imagine when he is in his prime, something he has not even scratched the surface on.

Seager will be this year’s Christian Yelich. A young all-star that we all know is talented but nobody really regards as an MVP.

There is no guarantee that Seager will win the MVP but he certainly is going to have the first of many monster seasons for the Los Angeles Dodgers.