Corey Seager spent the second half of the season playing through a bone spur in his elbow, a new injury wrinkle that adds to a year already defined by missed time for the Texas Rangers shortstop.
Chris Young, the team’s president of baseball operations, said Monday that Seager had been dealing with the issue for a couple of months. The Rangers are still figuring out the next step, and surgery remains on the table.
If that route is needed, Young said “it’ll be minor and he should make a full recovery.”
Seager’s season ended with more questions than usual, even if the production still had some familiar pop. He finished with a career-low .227 average and was limited to 102 games, the second straight year he’s landed on that exact total.
In his final at-bat Sunday, he launched a two-run homer in the ninth inning, giving him his fifth straight 20-homer season and the seventh of his career. He also drove in 51 runs.
The injury news comes after a year in which Seager missed 54 games and spent time on the injured list three separate times. Twice it was for lower back inflammation, and he also missed 12 games in June after a concussion suffered in a home-plate collision with Kansas City catcher Carter Jensen. Until Monday, the elbow issue had not been mentioned.
The Rangers are also dealing with uncertainty on a few other fronts. Young said third baseman Josh Jung, who broke his right hand, could go the surgery route or choose a non-surgical recovery plan. Catcher Danny Jansen may need a “small hand procedure,” though Young said it would not be a major issue.
Jung hit .299 with 12 homers, 42 RBIs and an .827 OPS in 104 games. He also sat out all of August with a left calf strain, then returned and batted .341, going 15 for 44 over 12 games before being hit by a pitch Friday night in Minnesota.
Jacob deGrom’s season, meanwhile, ended with fatigue and wear showing up at the finish line, even if the stuff was still there. Young said the two-time Cy Young Award winner just needs rest and recovery after dealing with groin tightness over the final weeks and left hip soreness as well.
DeGrom went 11-11 and finished with a career-worst 4.20 ERA. He matched a career high by giving up eight earned runs in his final start Friday night in a loss at Minnesota, exactly one month after the same thing happened at the Chicago White Sox.
“Finished the season, his stuff was still really good. I think his last pitch Friday night was 98 miles an hour.
The ball was coming out great,” Young said. “There’s no doubt he was fatigued.
I mean, it was 31 starts into a season. He gave us everything he had.
… I know the (last) game didn’t go well, but we also wouldn’t have been there without some of the performances Jacob gave us over the course of the season.”
Young pointed to deGrom’s Sept. 10 outing at Seattle as an example. He left after six scoreless innings because of groin tightness, with Texas ahead 3-0. The Rangers then lost 4-3.
Texas finished 80-82, its third straight non-winning season since the 2023 World Series title. The club entered the final day with a shot at the AL West, but Sunday’s 6-4 loss at Minnesota closed that door. A win would have left the Rangers at 81-81 for the second year in a row, but Houston’s 81-81 finish and head-to-head tiebreaker made that irrelevant in the playoff race.
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