'It's not easy': Seager reflects on Rangers' difficult season (2024)

ARLINGTON -- Corey Seager is a man of few words. He prefers to let his bat do the talking most of the time. And even when he does open up, it’s brief. But it’s usually worth listening to.

Ahead of the Rangers’ series opener against the Pirates on Monday, Seager briefly held court in the clubhouse, acknowledging the club’s disappointing title defense.

“You never envision playing badly, especially after playing well [last season], right?” Seager said. “But yeah, it’s not easy. It’s definitely not easy.”

Seager came out hours later and launched a pair of homers in the Rangers’ 4-3 win over the Pirates at Globe Life Field, marking his third multihomer game of the season. His Statcast-projected 449-foot homer in the first is tied for the fifth longest blast of his career.

“What a game,” said manager Bruce Bochy. “He pretty much carried the mail for us tonight. That’s what great players do. It was set up with Jonah [Heim’s] hit and Marcus [Semien] with the big double there for the three-run homer. [Pirates starter Luis Ortiz] was pitching well. It took a couple long balls to win this one.”

A game like Monday’s truly illustrates exactly what Seager does best: punish mistakes. His homer in the first inning came on a middle-middle cutter, hanging over the plate. His second came off a hanging slider up in the middle of the plate.

“Seager beat us today,” said Pirates manager Derek Shelton. “The two home runs, we didn’t execute pitches. He’s one of the best players in the game and we made two flat, middle-middle breaking balls to him and you cannot do that. I think we saw what happens when you do that.

“Especially the way he’s swinging the bat, you just can’t miss in the middle of the plate. He’s going to do damage if that is the case and he did damage tonight.”

Thanks to Seager, this also marks the first time the Rangers have won back-to-back games since a season-high five-game winning streak from July 21-25.

Despite the Rangers’ postseason hopes slipping away by the day, one thing is clear: Seager isn’t going to stop playing hard each and every night. He acknowledged that back-to-back wins like that could rejuvenate a club that’s been limping around for much of August.

Seager is more than happy to continue contributing in the best way he can. There’s no doubt the mental toll it’s taken to grind through the season, and the club isn’t quite living up to expectations.

This is Seager’s 10th year in the big leagues. He never missed the postseason a single time in his first seven, all of which were spent with the Dodgers. With just over six weeks left in the 2024 season, it stands to reason that Seager will miss the postseason for the second time in three years with the Rangers.

For Seager alone, this season has been a bit more mentally taxing than even 2022, when he missed the postseason for the first time in his career.

It was his first season with the Rangers, and his and Semien’s blockbuster signings were meant to usher in the new era of Texas baseball. But back then, the club was coming off a 102-loss season in 2021. There was no guarantee that two players could change things at the flip of a switch.

That’s why 2024 is so much more difficult.

“For sure, just knowing where you were and knowing what you're coming into, and not expecting [to lose], but knowing there were going to be the challenges [in 2022],” Seager explained. “After winning and playing well last year, and expecting to now win and expecting to play well all the time and then not doing it, it's definitely hard for sure.”

Seager called this season a learning experience for himself and his teammates.

“It's not easy, right?” Seager asked rhetorically. “Like the game is not easy, it's always going to challenge you. And we've been challenged, and now you see how you respond. You haven't played well. You put yourself in a hole. But that doesn't mean you just give in. And you can still continue to play well and try to play well.”

With just under 40 games left to play, it may be hard to recognize what’s left to play for as Texas’ postseason hopes slip through its fingers. But Seager has just one goal moving forward.

“To play good baseball,” Seager said. “That's about it. It's all you can do, really, at this point, is just go out there and play good baseball.”