Corey Seager is out of the lineup for the Texas Rangers in the opener of a three-game series at Houston, the report says. Ezequiel Duran is set to start at shortstop and bat second against the Astros on Friday night, while Seager — the two-time World Series MVP — will not be in the No. 3 spot he has occupied most of the season.
The move comes as Seager battles the worst slump of his big-league career, the report says. He is hitless in his last seven games and in the midst of a 0-for-27 slide that the report calls a career-worst, a stretch that has included 11 strikeouts.
Seager has started 42 of the Rangers’ 43 games this season and has said he feels fine physically, the report adds. If he does not come off the bench against the Astros, the absence would end a streak of 24 consecutive games played since his only game off this season on April 16.
The report lists Seager’s batting average at .179, ranked 163rd of 171 qualified batters going into Friday’s games. It also notes he is in the fifth season of a 10-year contract worth $325 million, has 28 hits and 22 walks this season, and 50 strikeouts that account for 27.5% of his 182 plate appearances. He has seven home runs and 20 RBIs, per the report.
The slump marks the latest point in a 12-season career in which Seager has a .285 lifetime average in 4,500 at-bats over 1,173 games, the report says. It also notes this is the first time in any of those seasons that he has fallen below .200 this late, and that in eight seasons he never finished a campaign under that mark. The report recalls that Seager hit .194 after 10 games last year before going 14 for 30 over the next eight games.
First-year Rangers manager Skip Schumaker had suggested that keeping Seager out of the lineup would coincide with a day off for the team, the report says. No further lineup decisions were detailed in the report for the remainder of the series opener.
