Cal Baseball alum Marcus Semien to star in the 2023 World Series with the Texas Rangers
Semien is in the second year of a seven-year $175 Million contract with the Texas Rangers
Cal Baseball may have another World Series champion alumni when the 2023 World Series is over. Last year, the Houston Astros added catcher Korey Lee as a mid-series replacement just before they won the World Series clinching game 6. Korey Lee, traded by the Astros midseason in 2023 to be reunited with his former Cal teammate Andrew Vaughn with the Chicago White Sox did not get in the game.
The 2023 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers will have the most prominent Cal Baseball affiliation since 2017 when another Cal alum Brandon Morrow became only the second pitcher in MLB history to pitch in all seven games of a World Series in a losing effort with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Of course, Semien will have an even larger impact on this World Series as a position player who will have 5+ at-bats batting on the top of the Rangers’ lineup in each game.
Signed by the Rangers to a large $175 Million contract during the recent 2021 offseason, Marcus Semien has shifted to play second base because the Rangers also gave a ton of money to shortstop Corey Seager in the same offseason. Rangers have continued their heavy spending way this past offseason to add ace Jacob deGrom (injured and won’t pitch this World Series) and turned-into-ace Nathan Eovaldi (game 1 starter). Rangers made a big midseason trade to add Max Scherzer to their rotation, but many (particularly Bay Area baseball fans) will likely point to the new dugout addition of Bruce Bochy as the manager starting in this 2023 season as the reason for their current postseason success.
An “iron man” by modern standards, the 33-year-old Cal alum is one of the very few players to have played in every game in 2023. He is behind only Atlanta Braves first-baseman Matt Olson on the current consecutive games played leaderboard. While a common narrative to explain his subpar 2023 playoffs (0.192/0.276/0.231 slash line with 0 homers) is that he might be tired, no one should be surprised if the always streaky Semien does have a strong World Series.
Fangraphs has a great article about Semien’s current struggle and his patented inconsistency in his career. They do note his playoff struggles against the fastball to hit too many weak pop flies, but the article also showed how his hard-hit rate has stayed fairly constant.
Of the 46 balls Semien has put into play, 13 have had an xBA below .020 – just over 28%. Similarly, 20% of his batted balls have had an xBA below .010. In the regular season, those percentages were just 15% and 11%, respectively. There’s no defending that kind of contact; there’s no such thing as “bad luck” on balls in play when the balls in play are hit so poorly. But at the end of the day, one out is just one out. A popup isn’t any worse than a routine groundout, even though the popup is going to have a harsher effect on a hitter’s expected stats. More to the point, being a good hitter is more about the high-quality contact a batter can make, rather than the low-quality contact he doesn’t make.
And Semien is still making high-quality contact at a similar rate. His line drive rate is up. He’s pulling balls in the air as much as ever. On all balls in play with an xBA above .020, he has a higher xBA and a similar xwOBA as he did throughout the year. About 26% of his batted balls have had an xBA over .500, compared to 24% in the regular season, and 9% have had an xBA over .800, compared to 10% in the regular season. He’s still making good contact, but it’s harder to see that, because his poor contact has been worse than usual.
Marcus Semien is arguably the Rangers’ most valuable player in the regular season. He has a team-best fWAR of 6.3 to be a borderline MVP candidate (he would be even more so in a league with the unicorn that is Shohei Ohtani), because teammate Corey Seager missed a lot of time early. A bit of a late bloomer in the MLB, Semien's best seasons have come after his age-28 season in 2019 when he posted a 6.5 fWAR season with the Oakland A’s, hitting a career-best wRC+ of 138 (AKA 38% better than the league average). While his 2019 homer total of 33 homers was likely aided by the juiced ball that season, Semien set a career-high homer total of 45 in 2021 while playing for the Toronto Blue Jays. An asterisk is probably warranted for that season where the Blue Jays played a majority of their home games in minor league ballparks in Florida and Buffalo, NY due to COVID travel restrictions. Nonetheless, Semien has shown the ability to be a solid hitter whose hard-hit balls can leave the yard, especially if the conditions are right.
Semien has a lifelong tie to Berkeley being the son of two Cal alumni. Marcus Semien’s father Damien Semien played for Cal Football from 1990-93 as a wide receiver. Semien still resides in Berkeley during the offseason. After marrying former Cal Volleyball standout Tarah Murrey, the two Golden Bear greats have three sons and one daughter. Do not be surprised if those children become future Cal Bears and thrive in the sports of their choice.
Marcus Semien is no stranger to the “World Series” in a sense. He was an instrumental part of Cal’s improbable run to the 2010 College World Series. You can find him making a cameo in the “Cal Baseball Reinstatement Rap” that would have played a lot differently now had the program not been saved then.
Drafted by the Chicago White Sox in the sixth round of the 2011 MLB Draft, Marcus Semien made his MLB debut in September of the 2013 season. He finally became a regular starter in 2015 at shortstop with the Oakland Athletics after behind a part of the post-2014 offseason deal that saw the White Sox traded Semien, Chris Bassitt, Rangel Ravelo, and Josh Phegley to the A’s in exchange for Jeff Samardzija and Michael Ynoa.
Years of working with Ron Washington turned his defense from subpar to “golden”. Semien eventually won a Gold Glove in 2021 after being a finalist in 2018. His great 2019 season saw him finishing 3rd in the AL MVP vote, but Semien struggled in the short 2020 season. The struggle meant that Marcus Semien had to bet on himself and sign a one-year $18 Million deal with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2021 where he played second base. A rebound to MVP level earned him the big money from the Texas Rangers. While he struggled with the Rangers early, hitting fly balls to the warning track more consistently than most other players, the warmer weather eventually turned those balls into homers and he still managed a 104 wRC+.
Coincidentally (or not, thanks to AI), the first Marcus Semien highlight I find on YouTube is from his great May, and it started with a hit against the Arizona Diamondbacks and their Game 1 starter Zac Gallen.
Best of luck to Cal Baseball alum Marcus Semien in the 2023 World Series! I do think he is due for some big hits and will hopefully crush his first postseason homer of the 2023 playoff soon. The Cal alum will almost surely have a few great opportunities to enter the World Series lore.
