Corey Seager apologized more than once.
He apologized when he couldn’t or wouldn’t explain why he was hit in the playoffs.
“I don’t have a good answer for that,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Seager apologized again when he refused to back down from his departure from the Dodgers.
“We’ll move on,” he said. “Sorry.”
Now a shortstop for the Texas Rangers, the 30-year-old Seager returned to Dodger Stadium on Tuesday to face his former team for the first time.
He was never one to draw attention to himself when he played here. He wasn’t about to start now.
Seager, sidelined in the series opener with a strained hamstring, had to understand the subtext of each question.
In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he was the World Series’ most valuable player as the Dodgers won their only title in 36 years. However, their half-hearted attempt to sign him to a long-term contract resulted in them losing him to upstart Rangers three winters ago.
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Last year the Rangers won the World Series and Seager was again the MVP.
The evaders? Without Seager in their lineup, their hitters have choked in each of the past two Octobers.
Seager is in the third year of a 10-year, $325 million contract with the Rangers, and the Dodgers’ refusal to offer him a similar deal is the biggest move for them under Andrew Friedman.
He was their Mr. October.
They have won just one play-off game since he left.
That raised questions about whether their current players are built for the postseason spotlight. Friedman pushed back against the suggestion last year in the aftermath of their humiliating first-round exit against the Arizona Diamondbacks, arguing there was no such thing as a postseason player.
“Look at Corey Seager,” Friedman said, pointing out that Seager did not perform well in the 2019 and 2021 playoffs.
Manager Dave Roberts did what he could on Tuesday to downplay the effect of Seager’s defection on the Dodgers.
“As far as we’re concerned,” Roberts said, “we still need more than one player. I think collectively we haven’t been great offensively over the last few years.”
The Dodgers likely wouldn’t have traded for Trea Turner at the 2021 trade deadline if they hadn’t anticipated Seager’s exodus. They probably wouldn’t have converted outfielder Mookie Betts to shortstop if they hadn’t lost Seager.
On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t have signed Freddie Freeman before the 2022 season if they hadn’t had to replace Seager’s left-handed bat in the middle of their lineup.
For his part, Seager was gracious about his homecoming, with the Dodgers paying tribute to him with a highlight package on their video scoreboard.
“I’ve spent a lot of time here,” Seager said. “This organization raised me. Set up here. It has somewhat made me the man I am today. Taught me the game of baseball. Made a lot of friends, made a lot of friends. I had a lot of good times there, so all those memories flash back when you drive in.
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Seager said he spent part of his team’s day off Monday in Manhattan Beach with Dodgers company man Chris Taylor. Seager marveled at Betts’ ability to move to shortstop and revealed he remains in touch with his fellow 2020 postseason hero.
He credited the Dodgers with helping him build a winning culture with the Rangers, who lost 102 games the season before signing him.
“They taught me everything I knew,” Seager said of the Dodgers. “How to win. How to do things the right way. It’s a first-class organization. That’s what you try to bring to another first-class organization. It’s all those little things you’ve learned throughout the year that you try to to spread and what you are trying to talk about.”
Predictably, Seager wasn’t as revealing when asked about the efforts the Dodgers made to re-sign him.
In his final spring training with the Dodgers, the team offered Seager an eight-year, $250 million deal, which he turned down.
Did he think at the time that 2021 would be his last season with the Dodgers? Or did he continue to hope that they could work something out?
“You’re always hopeful,” Seager said. “That was a long time ago, though. I actually can’t remember how it went.”
Everything turned out well for Seager, who signed one of the most lucrative contracts in baseball history and won another World Series. The Dodgers are still waiting for the day when they can say everything went well for them too.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
