With Corey Seager and Michael Fulmer, Dodgers, Tigers played trade cards right
Right around the time the Los Angeles Dodgers were resisting offers of tested veterans for one of their top prospects last year, the Detroit Tigers were on the other end of one such deal.
Both teams are now the proud employers of this year’s top rookies.
Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager was voted the National League rookie of the year unanimously Monday after enjoying such an outstanding season that he was also selected as one of the three finalists for MVP honors. Tigers right-hander Michael Fulmer claimed the award in the American League by a larger margin than expected, easily outpointing New York Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez.
Seager’s victory extends to 17 the list of Dodgers who have won an award that is now named after one of their own in Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson and was instituted in 1947, the year he broke into the majors.
“It’s obviously awesome to win it in general,” Seager said, “but to bring it back to L.A., it hasn’t been there for a while, and they’re known as an organization for winning all those rookies of the year. … It’s pretty cool to be connected to all the guys that came before you. It’s pretty special for me.”
Seager’s special talents were known around the game ever since the Dodgers made him the 18th overall pick in the 2012 draft. When the L.A. brass sought pitching help for a playoff push midway through the 2015 season and the pressure intensified to trade for an established star like David Price or Cole Hamels, the club kept Seager off limits.
It didn’t take long to see the payoff. Seager batted .337 after a September 2015 callup, then got the nod over veteran Jimmy Rollins in the postseason. He came in with huge expectations as the game’s top prospect this year and lived up to every one of them.
Seager, 22, probably won’t become the first NL player ever to win rookie honors and the MVP, but his mere presence among the finalists illustrates the degree of his impact on the Dodgers, winners of the NL West crown for the fourth year in a row.
Seager finished second in the league with 193 hits while batting .308 with 26 home runs, 72 RBI and a .877 on-base-plus-slugging percentage to earn all 30 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. His 150 points easily outdistanced Washington Nationals outfielder Trea Turner (42) and right-hander Kenta Maeda (37), a fellow Dodger.
Besides leading Los Angeles in batting average and runs scored (105), lefty-swinging Seager anchored their infield with steady play at shortstop. He finished fourth in the league in Ultimate Zone Rating and Defensive Runs Saved while playing in 157 games.
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Seager acknowledges his baseball lineage has proved a big advantage, and it shows in his poise on the field. He’s the younger brother of Seattle Mariners third baseman Kyle Seager and of Justin Seager, a corner infielder in the Mariners system.
“I’ve had conversations with Kyle about pretty much every aspect of the game,’’ he said. “He’s been kind of that angel on your shoulder that you can go to. It’s a great relationship that I have with both of them. We bounce ideas off each other. We took ideas from each other. We gave ideas to each other. It was all-out help from both of them.’’
The New York Mets were desperate for offensive help in late July 2015 when they packaged Fulmer with fellow pitching prospect Luis Cessa and sent them to the Tigers for outfielder Yoenis Cespedes.
The Cuban slugger was a major factor in the Mets reaching the World Series that October. The benefits for the Tigers came this season, when Fulmer helped rescue their pitching staff.
Fulmer, 23, went 11-7 with a 3.06 ERA and combined forces with staff ace Justin Verlander in boosting a faltering rotation. Fulmer was nearly untouchable for a 10-start spell from May 21 to July 17, going 7-1 with an 0.83 ERA in that stretch as the Tigers won nine of those games.
Relying on a diverse repertoire that included a fastball, sinker, slider and changeup, Fulmer elicited ground balls at a 49% rate and pitched at least six innings in 15 of his 26 starts. He ranked first among AL rookies in innings (159) and strikeouts (132) and fell just three innings short of qualifying for the ERA race, where he would have placed third in the league.
One of the keys to his success was polishing his changeup by working with pitching coach Rich Dubee and the Tigers catchers.
“Dubee helped me quite a bit with it as far as loosening the grip and loosening my wrist and basically just trusting it and throwing it at the bottom of the zone and letting it work,” Fulmer said.
Fulmer was an easy winner (142-91) over Sanchez, who became the darling of New York with his offensive exploits. The Dominican native was just the second player ever to hit 20 home runs in his first 51 career games, and he was twice named player of the week in his first month.
But while Sanchez’s impact was immediate and undeniable, Fulmer’s was more extensive, spread out over most of the season.
It helped that he had a former rookie of the year, Cy Young Award winner and MVP like Verlander to rely on.
“I remember back in spring training when I was kind of nervous to come up to him, because I watched him ever since he was a rookie. He’s been one of my favorite pitchers in the game,” Fulmer said. “He was an open book this year. I had a ton of questions for him and he answered every single one of them.”