Corey Seager homers late in Rangers win over Athletics

OAKLAND — Corey Seager, a man of few words, was frank at the end of the Rangers’ most recent homestand when asked about his early season struggles: “I just think I’m not getting enough hits.”

Rangers manager Bruce Bochy has allowed Seager to work through those struggles on the field this season, a right the superstar shortstop has earned. But even when Seager doesn’t look quite like himself, he still finds a way to come up big for the Rangers.

The Texas offense was seemingly at a loss against the A’s on Monday night, and they were held scoreless through the first seven innings. Oakland lefty Alex Wood shut them down, allowing just two hits, both singles. No runner got past first base until the eighth inning when Josh Smith drew a leadoff walk and Leody Taveras blooped a single into shallow center field off reliever Lucas Erceg.

Enter Seager, who promptly launched a middle-middle changeup 422 feet into the right-center field corner at the Coliseum for a three-run homer, giving the Rangers a lead and an eventual 4-2 win to open the four-game set in Oakland.

“It’s hard to get bigger than that, with two outs in the eighth inning,” Bochy said. “We were kind of stagnant there and the guys did a good job getting on base to set it up. He got a pitch you could handle and on a cool night, you gotta hit it well to get out of here and he did that. We’ve talked about Corey, I’ve said it many times, there’s no concern there. This guy is one of the best hitters in the game and he picked a nice time to come through for us tonight.”

Seager entered the day 4-for-his-last-21 and 7-for-his-last-54. He has hits in four straight games and is batting .227 with a .610 OPS on the season.

Though he hasn’t had much to show for it, lately Seager has looked more comfortable at the plate and he’s been hitting the ball harder, including a flyout with a 100.6 mph exit velocity and a .610 expected batting average in the third inning of Monday’s win.

When asked if he felt like he’s been squaring the ball up better lately, Seager replied simply once again: “I feel like I’ve gotten more hits.”

While the offense was quiet most of the night, Texas starter Andrew Heaney did his job keeping the Rangers in the game to set up Seager’s go-ahead homer. He allowed two runs, only one of which was earned. He didn’t walk any batters, while striking out five. He looked like the best version of himself, even as the defense didn’t do any favors behind him.

“They’ve done a hell of a job for us,” Seager said of the starting pitching. “We have not been the most productive so far this year. They’ve kept us in a lot of games and won us a lot of games because of it.”

But the Rangers offense has felt inevitable, even as they’ve gone through early season struggles, Seager’s chief among them.

Seager is a meticulous guy. He works hard on his swing daily, both with the Rangers’ hitting coaches and his personal coach. Although this season hasn’t yielded typical results, the process is there. It’s only a matter of time before it starts coming together again.

“I mean, he’s the World Series MVP,” Heaney said. “He bats second everyday, and plays great shortstop. Obviously, I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but this probably hasn’t been the start that he wanted. But there’s not a single person that doubts his ability, obviously, in this clubhouse.

“We just gotta keep going. I think it’s always one of those things, when anybody struggles early in the season, it can really feel like, ‘Oh my god, this is gonna be all year.’ But then you turn a corner and then you look back in August and you’re like, I don’t really think about April and May.”