Dodgers’ Seager Is One Of Baseball’s Best Assets

He’s yet to play a full season, but Los Angeles Dodgers prospect, and Opening Day shortstop, Corey Seager is already one of baseball’s best assets — i.e. one of the most team-friendly contracts in all of the sport. While it’s not overly shocking, it’s still a tad stunning with all things considered.

In a list released on ESPN Insider a little bit ago, the stud prospect came in ranked sixth on the list. The players above him all had substantially more experience in the Majors than Seager did, though. That speaks to how special people perceive Seager to be, and what his upside truly is right now.

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From Dan Szymborski on ESPN dot com today:

No, Seager isn’t going to maintain his current .337 career batting average in the majors, but his .293/.344/.487 line at two levels in minors — these days, Dodgers prospects don’t have crazy Albuquerque-pumped numbers like in the days of Billy Ashley and Greg Brock — suggests a bright future. And if he does stay at shortstop, his value just gets that much higher.

In case you’re wondering who the five players ranked above Seager were, they are: Carlos Correa, Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, Francisco Lindor, and Mookie Betts. All five of them have at least 380 professional at-bats at the big league level. Seager only has 98. And he showed up on a list just behind them.

Seager’s added value as a shorstop who can hit the cover off the baseball is one of the things that catapults him up this list, as does the fact that he’s under team control for another six seasons. By the time Seager is eligible to hit free agency, he’ll be 27 years old. That is, of course, if he hits free agency at all.

If Seager performs the way that the team expects him to perform, don’t be shocked to see him get an extension fairly quickly in order to buy out his arbitration years and a free agent year or two. The Dodgers plan on him staying at shortstop for a long time, so his value on a list like this will definitely get higher.

Big things are expected out of the kid, and if he produces then he’s going to take baseball by storm and help deliver untold success to Los Angeles. Let’s just hope and pray that that happens because it’d be a truly wondrous thing to behold. For now, he’s sixth on this list. He might be first or second soon.