MLB: Seager Brothers Mashing in the West

The Seager brothers, Corey and Kyle, have been considered players that would be very good in the future for a while now. Corey Seager had a stronger prospect profile, but Kyle Seager is older and has proven himself in his MLB career.

Coming into the 2016 season, there was national excitement about an infielder with the last name Seager. Rather than it being for the third baseman of the Seattle Mariners who has been an above average hitter every year since his first full season in 2012, it was for the rookie who had made a short appearance in September of 2015.

In their preseason prospect rankings, many sites ranked Corey Seager as the best prospect in all of baseball, including MLB.com, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus. Needless to say, there was a large amount of anticipation entering the 2016 season about Corey Seager. There wasn’t quite the same excitement for Kyle Seager, a player stuck on a team on the West Coast that hasn’t been in the playoffs during his entire career.

Their paths to the big leagues differ greatly. Kyle Seager, the eldest of three brothers (third brother Justin Seager was drafted by the Mariners in 2013), was a star player in high school and college. In 2008 at the University of North Carolina he was a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award. In 2009 he was drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the third round. Scouts didn’t fawn over Kyle, and many found faults in his game when he entered professional baseball.

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He managed to move past that adversity and become the Mariners’ starting third baseman for all of 2012. Since then he’s posted a wRC+ above 100 in every single season.

Corey Seager’s path to the big leagues started with him being drafted by the Dodgers in the first round of the 2012 MLB Draft out of high school. Despite having committed to what was at the time considered one of the best college baseball programs around, the University of South Carolina, he decided to sign with the Dodgers. Since being drafted in 2012, he has worked his way through the minor league system, exciting Dodgers fans at each new step on the road.

When Corey Seager made his MLB debut in September of last year, he lived up to every bit of the hype. In that month alone (skewed by larger September rosters, no doubt) he hit .337/.425/.561 while striking out just 16.8 percent of the time.

Despite taking very different paths to the start of the 2016 season, the Seager brothers’ performances in 2016 have been incredibly similar. Both brothers are firing on all cylinders and hitting the ball extremely well for their respective teams.

In Seattle, Kyle Seager has played well at third base while hitting .289/.367/.516 with 25 home runs. His ISO is .227 while holding a wRC+ of 138. For the Dodgers, Corey Seager has hit .314/.376/.529 with 23 home runs. Corey’s ISO sits at .215 with a 144 wRC+. Corey is getting on base at a slighter better pace while also collecting more extra base hits. Their offensive value, however, is about the same.

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Not only have they hit similarly all season long, their hitting statistics match up with some of the best in the league. While Corey is the favorite to win the National League Rookie of the Year and will probably get MVP votes, Kyle isn’t even considered in the American League MVP race. Despite this fact, both WARP and bWAR give Kyle Seager the advantage in wins above replacement over Corey Seager.

Corey’s WAR ranges from 5.5 on Baseball-Reference to 6.9 on Fangraphs, with 6.16 on Baseball Prospectus. Kyle’s ranges from 4.7 on Fangraphs to 6.86 on Baseball Prospectus, with 6.0 on Baseball Reference. Essentially if you take equal weight in each of the formulas for wins above replacement, Corey has an average of 6.19 while Kyle has an average of 5.85. Taking the average of the three numbers is meaningless apart from showing that the two brothers have been just about equally valuable to their respective teams this season.

Comparing the two brothers at this point can be fun, but mostly meaningless. They play in different leagues and likely won’t face each other outside of the occasional interleague matchup every few years. The fun part about what the brothers are doing this season is that they’re both among the best hitters in all of baseball.

Over the long history of baseball, there have been some talented groups of brothers to play. Most recently, the best group of brothers to play was Bengie, Jose and Yadier Molina. That group has piled up 44.9 fWAR, most of it coming from Yadier Molina. Yadier is the only active player, so it’s safe to assume that they likely won’t gather much more WAR. As of today, the Seager brothers have 30.7 fWAR between just the two of them.

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Add on the youngest Seager brother and years of Corey and Kyle mashing the ball, and the Seager brothers might end up being the greatest group of brothers to ever play the game. The current brothers atop the leaderboard are the DiMaggios, who managed to rack up 136.6 fWAR during their careers. It’s a lofty goal for the Seagers, but if anyone can do it they’ll be the ones. If they don’t ever reach that mark, they will still be a whole lot of fun to watch for a long time.