Our next All-Star profile is of shortstop Corey Seager, whose impressive 15 first-round home runs on Monday night were swallowed up first by the undercurrent of Mark Trumbo then by the tidal wave of Giancarlo Stanton. This is the first of what the Dodgers hope will be many All-Star appearances for Seager, who at 22 is already the team's best position player.
How he's an All-Star
Seager received the most votes (436) among National League shortstops from the players, earning a spot on the National League team as a reserve.
The other two shortstops on the National League roster are starter Addison Russell of the Cubs and Aledmys Diaz of the Cardinals.
First-half performance
Before the season I thought even as a rookie Seager could end up as the Dodgers' best hitter by the end of the season, but he earned that title by May. Seager is having one of the great seasons for any Dodgers shortstop in history, rookie or otherwise, hitting .297/.357/.521 with 22 doubles, 17 home runs, 42 RBI and 60 runs scored in 90 games so far this season.
Seager leads the Dodgers in hits (105), doubles, triples (three), home runs, total bases (184), batting average, slugging percentage, OPS (.877), wOBA (370), games (90), plate appearances (389), at-bats (353), starts (84) and defensive innings (767).
In Wins Above Replacement, Seager ranks third in the NL among position players in the FanGraphs version (3.9) and sixth in the Baseball-Reference version (3.2).
All-Star notes
Seager is the first Dodgers shortstop to be named an All-Star since Rafael Furcal in 2010, and the eighth Dodgers All-Star shortstop in franchise history, joining Leo Durocher (1938, 1940), Pee Wee Reese (1942, 1946-54), Maury Wills (1961-63, 1965-66), Bill Russell (1973, 1976, 1980), Jose Offerman (1995) and Cesar Izturis (2005).
The Dodgers have had seven rookies make the All-Star team - Don Newcombe (1949), Fernando Valenzuela (1981), Steve Sax (1982), Mike Piazza (1993), Hideo Nomo (1995), Joc Pederson (2015) and Seager.
The last Dodgers shortstop to get a hit in the All-Star Game was 50 years ago, when Wills hit a walk-off single to score Tim McCarver from second base in the 10th inning to give the National League a 2-1 win in St. Louis in 1966.
The only Dodgers shortstop with two hits in an All-Star Game was Reese, who had an RBI single and RBI double in four at-bats in the 1953 game at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.
Those two games account for all three of the runs batted in by a Dodgers shortstop in an All-Star Game, and Reese's double, off Mike Garcia of the Indians in the seventh inning in 1953, is the only extra-base hit by a Dodgers shortstop in an All-Star Game.
Wills is also the only Dodgers shortstop to score a run in an All-Star Game, scoring twice in 1962. In the first of two All-Star Games that season (from 1959-62, there were two All-Star Games each season, to help boost the players' pension fund; this was before the players were fully unionized), in Washington D.C., Wills pinch ran, stole second base and scored in the sixth inning, then singled and scored in the eighth inning in a 3-1 NL win.
Wills' steal in 1962 is the only stolen base by a Dodgers shortstop in an All-Star Game.
Seager's brother Kyle was an All-Star in 2014 with the Mariners. He was 0-for-2 with a pair of ground outs to first base, playing the final four innings as the designated hitter for the American League.
Petco Park
Seager made his major league debut in San Diego last September 3, and went 2-for-4 and scored twice. He doubled in his second at-bat, and hit a two-run single in his third at-bat.
He had multi-hit games in each of his first two major league games in San Diego, but even with those so far Seager is hitting just .261/.286/.370 (12-for-46) with five doubles and seven RBI in 10 games, including nine starts.