For Kyle Seager, power was needed for him to find a role with Mariners

CHICAGO – Kyle Seager hit his 20th home run of the year on Tuesday. That gave him his fifth season with 20 or more homers, something that only five others – Ken Griffey Jr., Jay Buhner, Edgar Martinez, Raul Ibanez and Alex Rodriguez – have done in Mariners history.

“That’s definitely an accomplishment for me. It’s something I didn’t think I would be able to do. It’s something I don’t take for granted,” Seager said in the clubhouse after the game.

For someone who seems to hit home runs with relative ease compared to most in the game, the comment surprised me.

You are Kyle Seager. Home runs are part of your game.

So I asked him about the post-game comment the following day.

“When you are in the minors and coming up, in college, you always want to play in the big leagues. I never really anticipated or saw myself hitting home runs, so this has definitely been a good shock for me,” he said.

Shock or not, home runs don’t just happen, especially not at the big-league level. The Kyle Seager we see now, however, is a much different player than the Kyle Seager who was selected by the Mariners in the third round of the 2009 draft.

“I kind of had to be,” he said. “I kind of had to adjust. The type of player I was – gap-to-gap, hit doubles, hit for a higher average. In reality when you look at the situation, I’m not a real fast guy, so me hitting for a higher average without any power wouldn’t have allowed me to stick as much, I think.”

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With the skill set he had developed, Seager saw himself as a second baseman or utility type player. But the Mariners picked his college teammate Dustin Ackley ahead of him in the draft and put him at second base, and they had recently signed utility man Chone Figgins to a four year contract, so his options with the big club seemed limited.

While he played mostly second base in the minors, an opportunity arose at third in 2011 when Figgins was unable to get anything going with the bat. Called up that July, he was still unsure of his role, the permanence of it and whether or not ultimately it would be a good fit.

“When I moved to third it became a realization that for me, to stick in the big leagues, I am probably not going to be a utility player, because I really can’t play shortstop and I don’t run as well,” he said. “For me to stick in the big leagues it had to be an everyday third baseman or second baseman, and with Ackley coming up, my only real choice was to be a third baseman. And third basemen that hit for a higher average and really can’t run or aren’t really driving in a whole lot of runners is kind of a tough gig, so I had to hit a for a little bit more power.”

A chat with a veteran on the club helped get Seager pointed in the right direction. He had seen Ackley and a couple of others leaning on Josh Bard for help in learning the big-league ropes, and he decided it was time to talk to the catcher, who had plenty of wisdom to share from his 10 years in the bigs.

“I finally grabbed a hold of him one day and said, ‘Alright, help me out here,'” Seager remembered. “‘What do you see? What do you think? What do I need to do?’ And he was like, ‘Honestly?’ And I went, ‘Yep,’ and he went boom boom boom…”

Bard asked if Seager thought he could play second base in the majors, and Seager said he could. Bard agreed, but pointed out that he wouldn’t be playing second in Seattle.

“He told me my only chance to stick here is as an everyday third baseman,” Seager said. “So you got to get bigger and you have got to use your body better, and we talked about hitting and he talked about some stuff I never thought of.”

Seager committed himself to the position and the changes that would need to come with that. If he couldn’t be a high-average, speedy middle infielder, he would have to come up with some power.

“I changed my swing a little bit and I definitely tried to get as strong as I could,” he said. “I continued to work on that, and it was something that I needed to do to stay.”

Had the decision been made to put Ackley in the outfield from the start or Robinson Cano had not been signed before the 2014 season, Seager may have been at second base and a very different offensive player. Instead he has turned into an All-Star third baseman with a Gold Glove to his name. He has five consecutive 20 home run seasons, and don’t look now, but the average is creeping back up, sitting at .287 on Thursday.

“Hey, it worked out fine for me,” Seager said with a smile. “I’m not mad how it worked out.”

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