Corey Seager made his return, so did the Rangers’ offense — coincidence?
Corey Seager #CoreySeager
ARLINGTON — Corey Seager, give us a thumbs up if you’re good to play.
Scratch that. He’ll do you one better.
Seager, in his first game back off of a stint on the injured list with a right thumb sprain, went 2 for 4 with a home run, three RBIs and two runs scored in the Rangers’ 11-1 win over the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday at Globe Life Field.
Maybe that’s no surprise. Seager went 7 for 16 with five extra-base hits and eight RBIs in his first four games back from a six-week-long stay on the injured list back in May. Then on Wednesday, just a few hours after he was cleared to play, he reignited a slumping offense in just the Rangers’ second at-bat.
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The dude just hits, regardless of the circumstances.
“Luck,” Seager chalked his quick returns up to. “I don’t know what to tell you on that one.”
He isn’t the only one around these parts running out of words.
“I don’t know what else to say about Corey,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “He’s amazing.”
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Amazing in ways like this: Seager faced live pitching for the first time since his July 21 injury on Wednesday afternoon. A few hours later, after the Rangers gave him the green light to play and made a last-minute lineup change, he faced off against real live pitching for the first time in 11 days.
He watched one Dylan Cease fastball soar for a ball before he walloped a knuckle curve into right field for his 16th home run of the season and a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning.
That jump-started the Rangers’ MLB-best 22nd game this season in which they scored double-digit runs. It also woke up an offense that’d fallen stagnant after its eight-run win over the Houston Astros last Wednesday.
In the second, as part of a five-run Rangers inning, Seager hit a middle-middle Cease fastball into left-center field for an RBI single that scored catcher Sam Huff to give Texas a 3-0 lead. Seager was one of five straight Rangers that reached base to begin the inning; Huff singled, Marcus Semien walked, Nathaniel Lowe singled and Adolis Garcia walked before Josh Jung grounded to shortstop for the first out. No. 6 hitter Travis Jankowski doubled to left field to give the Rangers a 7-0 lead.
The Rangers chased Cease — a could-have-been trade target before Monday’s deadline — after 1.2 innings. He needed 79 pitches to get just five outs. His contemporary in the opposite dugout, Dane Dunning, pitched 7.2 innings of one-run ball with 11 strikeouts to boot.
Jung, who’d been in a 0-for-14 slump, hit a two-run home run into Chicago’s bullpen in the fifth inning to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead. Semien hit a two-run home run off of the left field foul pole one inning later to make it 11-0. The Rangers totaled 15 hits, just seven fewer than the 22 total they’d compiled in their four previous games combined. Lowe and Huff each reached base in their first three at-bats.
Back to the man of the hour: Seager’s addition to Wednesday’s lineup was a late one. The Rangers announced a lineup at 3:10 p.m. that included Josh Smith at shortstop and Jankowski batting second, but Bochy said about an hour later that Seager, who’d passed the last two tests of facing live pitching and baserunning on Wednesday, would replace him.
“I felt good during my lives,” said Seager, who fielded the game’s first two outs with ease. “At this point, it’s kind of a pain tolerance thing, right? I felt like I could go. They were okay with me going.”
And so he went, as he’s been one to do this season. He slashed .350/.413/.631 with 15 home runs and 58 RBIs in 66 games before his recent injury. In the 55 games between his two stints on the injured list this season, he slashed .348/.402/.647/1.049 with 14 home runs, 25 doubles (most in the American League during that span) and 54 RBIs.
He missed 31 games with a left hamstring strain from April 12-May 17, then another nine due to the thumb sprain.
The Rangers went 21-18 over the course of his two absences. They are 41-28 when he plays. That’s good for a .594 winning percentage, which only three teams in baseball — the Atlanta Braves, the Baltimore Orioles and the Tampa Bay Rays — are clocked at.
“You miss him when he’s not in there,” Bochy said. “Of course you do, he’s that good.”
Texas, you’ll be shocked to read, is a better team with Seager in its lineup. Point in case: in the four games prior to Seager’s return, the Rangers scored just six total runs (fewest in MLB during that stretch), batted .177 (worst in MLB during that stretch) and went 1-3, the lone win being Tuesday’s 2-0 victory against the White Sox.
Then he came back. So did the Rangers’ offense.
That’s not just some coincidence.
“You get your guy back, and first at-bat he hits a two-run homer,” Bochy “There’s no doubt, that does a lot for the ballclub.”
On Twitter: @McFarland_Shawn
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