The Texas Rangers have had the privilege of Corey Seager being a member of their organization for four seasons now. He has six years remaining on the 10 year, $325 million deal he signed with the team prior to the 2022 season.
Corey Seager has been excellent during his time with the Rangers. Despite regularly missing time with injuries — something that has been an issue his entire career — he’s been one of the best players in baseball during his tenure with the Rangers.
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Nonetheless, an uninformed commenter yesterday referred to 2025 Corey Seager as “mid,” setting off a lengthy discussion on the topic.
In part because of that discussion, and in part because I don’t think folks necessarily appreciate how good Corey Seager is and has been for the Rangers, I thought I’d do a post to illustrate how good he has been.
Let’s start with 2025: Corey Seager has slashed .271/.373/.487 in 445 plate appearances this year. That 860 OPS is 17th best in the majors among players with at least 400 plate appearances, within 10 points either way of, among others, Vlad Jr., Matt Olson, Jose Ramirez, Kyle Tucker, Bryce Harper, Freddie Freeman, and Bobby Witt, Jr.
Seager is 8th in the majors in OPS+ among players with at least 400 plate appearances. He’s 19th in wRC+, with the split between the two being referable primarily to B-R treating the Shed as an extreme pitcher-friendly park, and Fangraphs treating it as slightly pitcher friendly. We have, of course, talked about the peculiarities in how the Shed has played this year previously, and will re-visit it in more depth in the near future.
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Of course, while Seager may have hit well, he has missed time this year, and a common complaint is that he’s really good when he’s on the field but his absences keep him from being an elite player.
However, despite missing roughly a third of the season, Seager is currently ninth in the majors among position players in bWAR, at 6.0. There have been only 27 seasons in Rangers history where a position player has had at least 6.0 bWAR. Seager has two of them.
If you go with fWAR instead of bWAR then Seager is at 4.0, tied for 33rd in the majors among position players. Still a well above average contributor.
Over the course of Seager’s four seasons with the Rangers, he has put up a 21.9 bWAR, which is 8th in the majors among position players, an averaging of roughly 5.5 bWAR per season.
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Defensively, he’s put up a +15 DRS at shortstop this year, by far the best of his career, and a +4 FRV, the second best of his career.
Corey Seager has been one of the top players in the game, both this year and throughout his time with the Rangers.
Yes, he’s missed time, and that’s made him less valuable than he would be otherwise. Which simply highlights the fact that, over the last three years, if he had not missed time, if he’d have played 150 game seasons, he’d have been one of the top two or three players in the league.
So far, at $32.5 million per season, Corey Seager hasn’t just delivered — at roughly $6M per win, he’s been a bargain.