After the Marcus Semien trade, Corey Seager enters the new season as the Texas Rangers’ longest-tenured position player.
He’s also a long-tenured member of preseason MLB “top shortstop” lists.
As the veteran Seager enters his 12th major league season, ESPN baseball guru Buster Olney places him right in the middle of his list of the top 10 shortstops in baseball: He has Seager at No. 5.
Seager is coming off another stellar year with an .860 OPS and 6.2 WAR in 2025, according to Baseball Reference. It was a season that met his usual standard — when he was actually on the field. Seager played just 102 games last year. He’s missed significant time in each of his last three seasons in Texas.
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Perhaps that’s why Olney dropped him a spot from last year’s list, flip-flopping him with Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor at No. 4.
Here’s what Olney had to say about Seager.
“Seager is very different from Lindor in that he tends to miss a lot of games — he was out for 60 last year, and he has reached 135 games on the season only once in the past eight years. But when he plays, he is a difference-maker: He generated 6.2 WAR in 102 games last season and has averaged a 139 OPS+ over the past eight. The Rangers might bear more injury worry than just about any other franchise, with Seager, Nathan Eovaldi and Jacob deGrom some of their core players — so they don’t have a lot of margin for error. They desperately need Seager to stay in the lineup.”
DeGrom was the Rangers’ only other entrant on Olney’s top 10 lists as he’s worked position-by-position across the diamond. He had deGrom ranked as the No. 10 pitcher last week, and no Rangers appeared in the six position groups since. Perhaps another sign of how top-heavy this Rangers roster is and how crucial it is, as Olney wrote, that their top players stay healthy.
When he is healthy, Seager remains one of the top shortstops in the game. He ranks as the best at his position in the AL West, two spots ahead of division rival Houston’s Jeremy Pena at No. 7. Bobby Witt Jr., Royals shortstop and product of Colleyville Heritage, tops Olney’s list at No. 1.
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