Corey Seager’s twentieth home run arrived with the Texas Rangers running out of places to put it. There was one out in the ninth inning, a four-run deficit and no tomorrow on the regular-season schedule. Brandon Nimmo scored ahead of him. Texas still needed two more runs.
Jake Burger struck out. Ezequiel Duran flied out. The Minnesota Twins had a 6-4 victory at Target Field, and the Rangers had an 80-82 finish that left them outside the postseason. Seager had supplied the last substantial swing of their season without being able to extend it.
Twenty home runs in 102 games is real production. So are 51 runs batted in and 45 walks. But Seager’s final line also included a .227 batting average and a .312 on-base percentage. The last home run belongs alongside those numbers, rather than replacing them with a more flattering final impression.
His Sunday began in nearly the opposite fashion. Wyatt Langford singled with one out in the first, surviving a replay challenge. Seager followed with a ground ball that became a double play. Langford was retired at second and Seager at first, ending the inning before Texas could build anything around its first hit.
That was Seager’s sixteenth double play of the season. Double plays require a runner ahead of the hitter, so the total alone cannot settle an argument about a player’s value. On this occasion, however, the cost was plain: one swing removed both the baserunner and the remainder of the inning. Against Dean Kremer, Texas would not get many more chances to assemble a rally.
Seager grounded out again in the fourth and flied out in the seventh. Kremer finished seven innings having allowed three hits and one run, without a walk. The Minnesota starter threw 74 pitches. The Rangers were doing little to prolong his afternoon, and Seager’s first three plate appearances supplied four outs between them.
The ninth changed his contribution considerably. Nimmo singled, Langford popped out and Seager homered. A day that had produced no hit and one extinguished threat now included two runs batted in. Baseball permits that sort of amendment very late in the proceedings. It does not promise that the amendment will be enough.
Nor would it be fair to leave Seager holding the entire loss. Danny Jansen’s solo homer in the third and Elias Díaz’s pinch-hit homer in the eighth accounted for Texas’s other two runs. The lineup finished with six hits and no walks. Seager was the only Ranger to homer with a teammate on base because there were so few opportunities for anyone to do it.
Minnesota had more help for its hitters. Luke Keaschall reached on two walks and a hit batter, scoring three times without a hit. Josh Bell brought him home with a sacrifice fly in the first and a two-run homer in the third. Kody Clemens drove him in during the fifth. Texas’s pitchers and Minnesota’s lineup combined to give those productive swings something extra to accomplish.
