Understanding Corey Seager, Rangers’ silent superstar: Cyborg? Spark plug?

ARLINGTON, Texas — When Corey Seager’s ball throttled out of the park in the first inning of Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, when the normally stoic shortstop began slapping hands, hopping around and yelling, Texas Rangers outfielder Robbie Grossman turned to teammate Josh Smith.

“I was like, ‘We’re going to the World Series,’” Grossman said.

That was the gravity of the moment. That statement underlined the magnitude of a first-inning blast off Cristian Javier — a titanic bomb that traveled 440 feet — and of Seager’s rare display of emotion.

When the ball left his bat, Seager began his trot around the bases with the same resolute expression and impenetrable body language his teammates are so used to seeing. But as the Minute Maid Park crowd went silent and Rangers fans back home roared, Seager rounded third base and gave a thunderous high five to third-base coach Tony Beasley. Seager then stepped on home plate, then practically levitated in the air as he celebrated with Adolis García, then Josh Jung, then the rest of a rowdy Rangers dugout.

“That was the first time in two years that we’ve seen that,” Rangers coach Donnie Ecker said.

“I think I started laughing,” catcher Jonah Heim said, “because I didn’t know how to react.”

Seager’s teammates have long marveled at his regimented routine and his tremendous talent. But emotion? This was unexpected.

“He does a really good job of compartmentalizing emotion, almost to a fault, where it looks like he doesn’t care sometimes,” first baseman Nathaniel Lowe said. “But when he hits a big homer against a team that he feels took the title away from him, he’s going to show some emotion.”

The home run was a product of Seager’s persona, a cold-blooded athlete who has spent 29 years honing his craft to produce exactly this type of swing. The reaction was a reminder that Seager is more than a machine programmed to destroy baseballs.

Everyone watching took note.

“It was basically an 11-run home run,” catcher Austin Hedges said. “We scored 11 runs that game because he did that. He set the tone, and he brought everybody’s energy levels up to a point where it was like, ‘All right, we can’t lose this game.’”

“I think silence is always misleading,” said Seager, now in a loud concourse, sitting in front of three cameras, a bundle of people in his face, asking questions.

Seager, in this case, was speaking about Rangers pitcher Nathan Eovaldi, who will start Game 1 of the World Series on Friday against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Eovaldi is by no means as reticent in the public eye as Seager. But he is another driven Ranger who lets his example do most of the talking.

The statement, it turns out, better applies to Seager. This adds up because Seager is not the type who revels in answering questions about himself. Of course his deepest insight would come in reference to someone else.

Even nine years into his career, Seager can still be uncomfortable in settings such as this one, Thursday’s World Series media day.

“It’s the quiet person in the room that you don’t know what’s going on,” Seager said, now talking generally about the concept of silence.“He’s not outward. He’s not telling you how he’s feeling. You never know what’s going on.”

As misleading as silence may be, Seager’s reputation as quiet and unquotable is simultaneously a bit overstated. He’s a hitting genius, and he can shed insight on his teammates as well as anyone. It’s more so that the whole media dog-and-pony show just isn’t Seager’s vibe.

“He puts on the stone face because he doesn’t want to get trapped in the media,” Lowe said. “It’s nothing personal with reporters. I don’t think he’s got, like, any sort of malice towards the media. It’s just something that he just doesn’t want to be a part of.”

As soon as the crowd in front of Seager dwindled Thursday, he was among the first Rangers to duck out of the concourse. Even fans, though, pick up on Seager’s often expressionless on-field tendencies. For Seager, this is less a concerted effort to be some kind of baseball cyborg and more just the way he is.

“Just kind of my personality,” he said.

Seager has had many big hits in his career. Plenty of great games. Fewer bad ones. Rarely can you tell a difference from watching Seager’s face or his body language. Ecker said he is the rare player who embodies the hyperfocus athletes love to talk about.

“I think he has elite behaviors,” Ecker said. “In a day and age where you play a game every day, it would be easy to become negative or complain. You never hear Corey put energy into things that don’t go into winning or performing.”

The single-minded pursuit of excellence makes him an ideal pupil for a hitting coach. Before Game 6 of the World Series, Seager was in the hallway outside the visiting batting cage at Minute Maid Park. He had AirPods in his ear, unfazed as a group of reporters walked by. He was going through his swing in slow motion, stopping and fixating at the imagined point of contact.

“It’s a different pursuit of knowing himself,” Ecker said. “I’m talking every joint angle, every body position he should be in, he really leverages the biomechanical side of it. He almost approaches his swing like a golfer would every single day.”

This sort of monomania, the type even Melville might envy, can lead to certain perceptions of Seager: that he’s a Terminator, a robot with an incredibly precise routine, one that is the same no matter the day or the game.

“He’s a machine,” Grossman said.

“If you tell him it’s cold outside,” Ecker said, “there’s a good chance he just stares at you and just doesn’t reply.”

Pinning down the essence of Corey Seager is a difficult venture. He can indeed be single-minded and hypercompetitive.

“He’s truly dedicated to winning,” Heim said. “That’s all he cares about. He doesn’t care what time you show up. He doesn’t care if you take BP, if you don’t take BP. All he cares about is that we go out on the field and we do everything we can to win.”

He is also a living, breathing person. Teammates know the rep but don’t totally subscribe to the cyborg theory.

“He can be vocal too, now,” second baseman Marcus Semien said. “Don’t think he’s extremely quiet.”

Smith, a Rangers utility player, laughed when asked about the longest conversation he has ever had with Seager. Smith said the two are close friends. They talk all the time.

“I guess he gets this ‘doesn’t talk much’ persona about him, but he’s fun off the field,” Smith said. “We’re good buddies.”

Heim just so happens to have a locker right next to Seager’s in the Texas clubhouse. Behind the scenes, it seems, Seager is just like any other ballplayer. He partakes in the Rangers’ daily card games, a natural source of bonding.

“He plays cards and he has fun with us,” Heim said. “He’s a man of few words, but when people are men of few words, when they talk, you usually listen.”

Seager also seems to take these card games as seriously as anyone on the club.

“He’s as competitive as anyone out there,” Grossman said.

An introvert in a public setting creates an inherently interesting dichotomy. For as much as Seager might come off as a mystery, it’s not exactly as if he’s trying to hide. He plays Fortnite, talks about cowboy boots and partakes in the team’s fantasy football league like most of his teammates.

Rangers reliever Josh Sborz was drafted the same year as Seager and came up with him in the Dodgers system. What’s the longest conversation he’s ever had with Seager?

“Six minutes, probably,” he joked. “Playing cards.”

Outfielder Travis Jankowski said he and Seager have bonded over conversations Jankowski called “totally irrelevant.” They like talking about ancient history: Egypt, pyramids, the Roman Coliseum.

“Yes,” Jankowski said, “he has a life outside of baseball.”

It’s all complicated. In one breath, teammates say how normal Seager really is.

“Probably one of the best teammates I’ve ever had,” Heim said. “But obviously he’s my locker mate, so he yells at me quite a bit. I get over it pretty quick.”

In another, they will marvel like the rest of us at Seager’s uncanny concentration.

“He brings that even-keelness that we all strive to have,” Jung said. “I think he’s the ultimate example of that.”

Many of the Rangers have seen video of Seager’s home run off Justin Verlander in the 2017 World Series. He cried out in celebration as soon as the ball left his bat. When Seager was named MVP of the 2020 World Series, he hoisted a trophy and immediately exclaimed into the rafters.

There’s something different about Seager in the postseason.

“You see him playing cards every day before he gets his work, so it’s like you see the funny, goofy Corey, and then you see the guy that’s super locked into his process when the game starts,” Jung said. “And I think that our whole team has kind of learned from that. Like, let loose. And then when it’s time to lock in, it’s time to lock in and do your job.”

Monday night, after the Rangers went on to roll the Houston Astros and clinch a trip to the World Series, Seager was back to the more subdued version of himself as soon as the game was over. A reporter asked about when Seager signed with the Rangers two years ago and whether that signaled to other players that the Rangers were for real. Seager shrugged and didn’t really give an answer.

“We always joke about how maybe he should show some emotion, just poking fun at him,” Heim said.

The reality is this: Seager is one of the best players in the sport. The Rangers would not be here without him.

On one recent occasion, Heim said, one of those comments about not showing emotion drew a retort from Seager.

“Jonah,” he said, “get me to the World Series, and then you’ll see some emotion.”

— The Athletic’s Levi Weaver contributed to this story.

(Top photo of Corey Seager: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)