IT'S ONE OF the greatest nicknames in baseball history: Mr. October.
And Corey Seager certainly seems to have done enough to earn the title.
The Texas Rangers shortstop just won his second World Series MVP Award, hitting .286 with three home runs, six runs and six RBIs in the five-game victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks. His bottom-of-the-ninth, game-tying two-run home run in Game 1 was the biggest hit of the series; he homered again in Games 3 and 4; then he went 2-for-4 in the clincher, including starting the winning rally in the seventh inning with a single that broke up Zac Gallen's no-hit bid.
For the entire postseason, Seager hit .318/.451/.682 with six home runs, 12 extra-base hits, 18 runs and 12 RBIs in 17 games as the Rangers ended a 62-season championship drought. He won his first World Series MVP honor back in 2020, when he hit .400 with two home runs and seven runs as the Dodgers beat the Rays in six games. He was also the NLCS MVP that year when he slugged five home runs in seven games against the Braves.
In other words: Those are some serious credentials for the moniker of the king of the month.
Unlike Reggie Jackson -- the original Mr. October -- Seager would be the last person to say he deserves to share the nickname, even if he does join Jackson and two pitchers, Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson, as the only two-time World Series MVP winners.
But for the first time since Jackson, it feels like a debate worth having -- so we'll just have to let his numbers do the talking for him.
FUNNY STORY: THE first time a teammate called Jackson Mr. October, it wasn't as a compliment. Many of us have missed this story, but Joe Posnanski clarified the origin of the nickname in his new book, "Why We Love Baseball." It was 1977, and Reggie was in his first year with the Yankees. He and catcher Thurman Munson, the team captain, hated each other. Early in the season, Jackson gave an interview in which he questioned Munson's leadership skills, calling himself "the straw the stirs the drink." Munson called Jackson a liar and was jealous of Reggie's big contract.
In the playoffs, Jackson got off to a terrible start. Manager Billy Martin even benched him in Game 5 of the ALCS. He went 1-for-6 in the first two games of the World Series, and after the second game, Jackson questioned Martin's decision to start Catfish Hunter, who had been injured. That prompted Munson to criticize his teammate. "We're trying to win a damn World Series and somebody's stirring," Munson said. "If I was hitting .111 or whatever, I wouldn't be second-guessing the damn manager."
Munson said Jackson should stop talking, but he didn't, instead referencing a nickname Jackson had used for himself in the clubhouse: "There are so many things going on. I've just got to laugh. Reggie hasn't been doing all that well. Still, he keeps talking. I guess Billy doesn't realize that he's Mr. October!"
As Posnanski writes, "There it was. There was the introduction of Mr. October. Munson meant it as the biggest dig he could imagine. Jackson was hitting .136 in the playoffs. He was causing endless problems. He was dragging the Yankees down. And yet he was calling himself Mr. October."
Then Reggie got hot. He scored two runs as the Yankees won Game 3. He homered and doubled as the Yankees won Game 4. After that game, the Associated Press referred to Jackson as "the man his teammates call 'Mr. October' because of his record of performing well in postseason play."
He homered again in a losing effort in Game 5, and then came his defining moment: Three swings and three home runs in the clinching Game 6. Reggie was forever Mr. October.
Can we re-use the nickname? Hey, there have been two Pudges (Carlton Fisk and Ivan Rodriguez), two Kids (Ted Williams and Ken Griffey Jr.) and two Docs (Dwight Gooden and Roy Halladay). Can there be two Mr. Octobers?
The career postseason numbers between Jackson and Seager received a lot of attention this week for their similarity:
Jackson: 77 games, 18 HR, 48 RBIs, .278/.358/.527
Seager: 78 games, 19 HR, 48 RBIs, .254/.350/.508
The numbers do split a little when we just use World Series totals, however, and that favors Reggie:
Jackson: 27 games, 10 HR, 24 RBIs, .357/.457/.755
Seager: 18 games, 6 HR, 15 RBIs, .294/.402/.588
Of course, the two couldn't be more different as personalities. Reggie craved attention, gave headline quotes to reporters, fought with teammates. He loved to tell the world how good he was -- heck, he wrote his first autobiography before he even joined the Yankees (and followed up with at least a couple more).
Seager is quiet in the clubhouse, old school on the field, rarely showing emotion. "It truly is incredible," he said in his postgame news conference that lasted less than five minutes. "But it's not just me, man. What this team did and how we competed and all the guys in there rallying, we don't really have one leader. The whole clubhouse is the leadership."
Reggie was the ultimate can't-keep-your-eyes-off-him type of player. Seager is efficiently impressive but lacks the bravado and flamboyance a nickname like "Mr. October" requires.
That element of the name will always belong to Reggie. Not that Seager could care less.
"That's what you want to be, right?" he said following the World Series victory. "You want to go out there and compete and that's it. It doesn't have to be flashy. Doesn't mean you're not trying. It's just kind of how I've always played."
LET'S MOVE TO more of the on-field evidence. What, exactly, makes Seager so good? For one thing, he's an unconventional left-handed hitter: He loves the ball up in the strike zone. He hit .370/.431/.719 on pitches in the upper half of the zone in 2023; of course, he also hit .298/.344/.558 in the lower half of the zone -- he has no big weakness. On the game-tying home run he hit in Game 1, Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald tried to get a four-seamer up at the top of the zone but didn't get it up nearly enough. Seager walloped a 418-foot blast with an exit velocity of 112.6 mph. Indeed, none of his six postseason home runs were cheap: All went at least 400 feet, two went 440 and four had an exit velo of 110 mph or greater.
The other thing Seager loves is swinging at the first pitch -- 52.1% of the time in the regular season, the highest rate of any qualified hitter (the MLB average is 31%). The pitch from Sewald? First pitch. His home run off Brandon Pfaadt in Game 3? First pitch. That approach does lead to a high chase rate on first pitches -- he ranked 122nd out of 133 batters in that category -- but overall he's not a wild hacker. His chase rate was 28%, just below the MLB average of 28.4%. So he's ultra aggressive on first pitches but in more control as the at-bats goes deeper.
Bruce Bochy used to manage against Seager when Seager was with the Dodgers and Bochy with the Giants.
"You appreciate him even more when you get to see him on a daily basis, how good this man is, how committed he is to winning," Bochy said after Game 5. "He plays a great shortstop. But at the plate he's as good a hitter as I've had."
But the name Mr. October implies an ability to turn it on even more in the monthlong postseason. Indeed, it's Seager's ability to rise to the moment in 2020 and 2023 that has us asking about his credentials for the name -- and his place among those hallowed names of Koufax, Gibson and Jackson. But is there really such a thing as rising to the moment? Jackson, not surprisingly, believed so: "People with the strongest character usually succeed in the biggest moments," he once said.
Seager's career postseason OPS is .858 ... which is just about what he's done in the regular season (.873). You can argue he's really just been the same hitter in the postseason as the regular season.
I looked at the 25 best hitters in postseason history via OPS, with a minimum of 150 plate appearances. (Jackson only barely cracks the list at 24th while Seager ranks 33rd, squeezed between Carlos Correa and Max Muncy.) Overall, most of those 25 players did perform a little better compared to their career OPS, an average of 8.4% better. That's a notable increase, especially considering you're facing better pitching in October. Most of the names on here are famous postseason sluggers: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, George Brett, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez. Reggie himself had a small increase from .846 in the regular season to .885. (The biggest improvement in the top 25 belongs to Kiké Hernandez, with a .719 OPS in the regular season but .893 in the postseason, thanks to 13 home runs in 179 at-bats!)
In some sense, it's a matter of opportunity. Jose Altuve has plenty of October moments -- he ranks second in home runs behind Ramirez. But he ranks just 35th in OPS. His numbers since 2015, when the Astros first made the playoffs: .309/.374/.502 in the regular season, .273/.340/.510 in the postseason. He's performed well, but he's also had nearly 500 plate appearances to accumulate some big moments. Reggie had some lousy postseason series -- like that ALCS in 1977 -- and so has Seager.
Still, World Series opportunities arrive far less often. That's when you get the chance to make your mark on history. Both of Seager's campaigns have been impressive, with plenty of arcing home runs and memorable moments. But it's hard to imagine any one game topping Reggie's night for the ages in 1977, amidst feuding with teammates, putting himself front and center, receiving one of the most famous curtain calls in Yankee Stadium history after his Titanic third home run into the center-field bleachers.
OK, Reggie can keep the nickname to himself. But Seager also deserves to be remembered as an October legend.