who went on the IL three days before Seager<\/a> with a hamstring strain, was out on the field running Tuesday and has started swinging a bat. He is significantly ahead of Seager. If he continues to make progress, he\u2019s likely to go on a rehab assignment over the All-Star break, perhaps to Arizona, in hopes of being able to join the Rangers when the second half opens in Atlanta. If guessing, in the best case, Seager is probably a week behind that, which might give him 10 days of games ahead of the trading deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\nAll of this leaves the Rangers equally frustrated. Seager and Langford are the team’s two best players and biggest offensive threats. Together they have combined to play in 91 games this season; the Rangers played game No. 91 of the season Tuesday. The duo has missed half of the season and the percentage is going to tilt to more than 50% by the time they return. \u00a0<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the Rangers, who began play Tuesday at 45-45, are in a stretch of 16 home dates in a 19-game stretch that concludes with a critical four-game set against Seattle. It is time to go. Now. But can a team go without its two best players?\u00a0<\/p>\n
And if it can\u2019t, then maybe the Rangers will start to rebuild. If so, a great place to begin a rebuild would be by trading Seager\u2019s hefty contract and, if he\u2019s productive, getting back a pretty good haul of prospects. You see the problem here. If he\u2019s not healthy, he\u2019s got no value. And after the year, Seager will have the right to veto any trade the Rangers might present to him. Creates an incredibly difficult situation to navigate. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an impediment to any kind of planning.<\/p>\n
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Can this team win without Seager? And if they can\u2019t win without Seager, can they get anything for him? The unfortunate answers are probably \u201cno\u201d and \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s the case, maybe the best thing is to consider if it is time to move Seager out of the middle of the infield and to a \u201csafer\u201d position like first base. Because to use one\u2019s ability, one must have reliability. You can\u2019t build a team around a superstar who misses about a third of each season. And yeah, that\u2019s about what Seager will average over a four-year period \u2014 if he comes back for the series with Seattle that starts July 24 and plays every day thereafter. Are you gonna play a guy with a questionable back every day? Another question nobody wants to answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which left us with one last direct question for Seager: He\u2019s going to be 33 next year, he\u2019s missed so many games \u2014 is it time to consider moving positions to increase his durability?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Seager said plainly. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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Wouldn\u2019t expect anything different from him. He\u2019s a shortstop. But, as the Rangers options for how to best use him dwindle, it\u2019s something which they may have to answer for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At least at that point, there would be some answers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Rangers shortstop Corey Seager watches from the dugout during the third inning of a baseball game against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[5,4,149,1567,69,3240,87966,83514,88018],"class_list":["post-746213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas-rangers","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-rangers","tag-texas","tag-texas-rangers","tag-texasrangers","tag-tp-skip-schumaker","tag-tp-texas-rangers","tag-tp-corey-seager"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116883570630849355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}