Former USA Baseball U-16 star Corey Seager found himself in exclusive company as he was named the World Series 2023 MVP after leading the Texas Rangers to their first World Series following a 5-0 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 5 at Chase Field on Wednesday.
With the Series tied 1-1, the Rangers won the next three games to clinch the best-of-seven series 4-1.
The Texas Rangers drew first blood in the series with a 6-5 win in Game 1 but fell back 9-1 in Game 2. They recouped and outplayed their opponents in the next two games 3-1 and 11-7, before beating the Diamondbacks on their home field for their first-ever World Series title win.
The Rangers
were formed as an expansion of the Washington Senators in 1961 before moving to
Arlington. For the first time in their franchise history, they became champions
after 52 years. They started the postseason as the fifth of six American League
seeds and then went on for an unprecedented 11-0 run on the road.
It was a marvelous run, propelled by the historically productive bats of Seager and former Cuba national team player and American League Championship Series MVP Adolis García and skippered by a likely Hall of Famer in Bruce Bochy, who managed France in the World Baseball Classic earlier this year and came out of MLB retirement to become just the sixth manager in history with at least four World Series wins.
Seager, who also won the award with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020, became the fourth player to win multiple World Series MVP awards, joining Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson. Seager and Jackson were the only players to have accomplished the feat with different teams.
The
29-year-old shortstop homered in three of the five games in the World Series
and was 6-for-21 for a .286 average with one double, three walks, along with
six RBIs and six runs.
Seager is a former member of USA’s U-16 squad in 2010. Five years later, he joined the Dodgers and played there until 2021, before joining the Rangers in 2022.
