MINNEAPOLIS – At least two players in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game have a special interest in one of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ top prospects.
First, by a wide margin, is that player’s older brother, Kyle Seager, an All-Star third baseman from the Seattle Mariners, who says that his kid brother, Corey, has big things ahead of him. The Dodgers just promoted Corey Seager, 20, from Class A Rancho Cucamonga, where he batted .352 with 18 home runs, to Double-A Chattanooga, where he will report Thursday after watching his brother play for the American League.
Corey Seager was one of the Dodgers’ two representatives, along with pitcher Julio Urias, in Sunday’s Futures Game. Those two, plus outfielder Joc Pederson, are widely viewed as the organization’s top three prospects.
“He pretty much does everything that I’m doing, but just a little better,” Kyle Seager said. “He’s bigger, stronger, faster, he runs better. He’s good. He’s going to do a lot of really good things in this game.”
When pitcher Zack Greinke visited Dodger Stadium not long before signing his six-year, $147 million contract in December of 2012, he remarked to general manager Ned Colletti that he liked the team’s first-round draft pick from the previous June. That player was Seager.
Greinke, who has said he would like to be a GM one day and comes up with a mock draft every June, reflected on his scouting report at Monday’s media availability.
“I didn’t have him No. 1 on my board or anything, but he probably could have been a top-10 pick and he made it to 19. He couldn’t have been a top-five pick. No one would have taken him in the top five, but he was really good,” Greinke said. “He has a really simple swing. Sometimes, if you have it that simple you lose power, but he still has power even though his approach is so simple. And he’s got the ability to play the infield.
“If you had told me he was going to be a right fielder, no I wouldn’t have taken him at No. 19. But as a third baseman with that hitting ability, that’s a very valuable player.”
Greinke also watched Seager’s two at-bats with the Dodgers in spring training.
“I don’t think he swung one time. He struck out on three pitches and maybe walked one time. That was also a little bit strange, because usually a young guy, if they come up to a big league game, they’re going to want to swing and he was just ‘take, take, take,’ so that’s probably a good thing that you could still stay calm and not change your approach,” Greinke said.