There is a fine line between cautiousness, fearfulness and evenness. And there was a time when Seager's evenness was even seen as weakness. When he was a hotshot high school prospect and scouts came to North Carolina to watch him play, Seager heard the same criticism over and over: He needed to ramp up his "pace and care," show more excitement, be more animated. His production on the field was unassailable; he hit .519 with 10 home runs and 37 RBIs his senior year. But he didn't exude passion. "It wasn't like I was just standing there," he says. "It was frustrating because I do care. My teammates know I'm trying."

After the Dodgers took him with the 18th overall pick in the 2012 draft, Seager heard the criticism again in the minors. He talked to his father, Jeff, a former college ballplayer who raised three pros -- Kyle, the oldest, is an All-Star third baseman for the Mariners; Justin, the middle one, is a corner infielder in the Seattle system. "We decided I'd try to talk more during games, to be the guy everyone else wanted me to be," Seager says. He yelled, he cheered. Eventually, he stopped. "It was a struggle for me," he says. "I told my dad I was never going to be the talker. I'm not high-energy. I'm not bouncing around. This is my speed. I love this game. You want me to be a leader? I'll do that in the locker room. I'll do that when I'm up to bat or when I'm fielding a ground ball."

He leaned on his brothers in those early days. "After I got drafted, Kyle's biggest advice to me was to make every level my big leagues. Because of him, I never thought about the next step, the next movement, where I was going to be tomorrow." Struggles toward the end of his first full year of pro ball showed Corey he "couldn't show up on a field and automatically be the best player. That's when I realized I needed to know exactly what I was doing and not rely on just being good." He took extra BP, thinking more about his swing's mechanics. He repeated High-A for part of the 2014 season, hit .352 with 18 home runs in 80 games and cut his strikeout rate by a quarter. "My main goal is that I don't want to be bad," he says. "The accolades and awards are fun, but I'd rather not stink than think about winning an MVP or Rookie of the Year or a Silver Slugger. I just don't want to embarrass myself."

Today, after leaving the batting tunnels and getting ready in the locker room, Seager walks to Field 3 -- a back lot out of sight of the Dodgers fans screaming his name. He strolls across the complex with his bat bag and glove. There's warm-up and fielding practice, then the coaches round up a basket of balls next to the temporary mound set up behind a screen several dozen feet from home plate.

My main goal is that I don’t want to be bad. - Corey Seager

Players mill around the outfield grass while Puig puts on a home run show. Ball after ball crashes into trees over the fence in left; Puig's raspy "Oh my gawd!" echoes across the field. After he finishes, Puig flips his bat high into the air and walks to the dugout. Turner, a mane of red hair flowing down his neck, drives balls into center field. Joc Pederson, his Dodgers hat high and tilted forward on his head, sends a couple over the wall before shattering his bat, the barrel's remains resting at a spot near first base. The other players laugh.

When Seager comes up, he smacks a line drive between first and second, just beyond the infield dirt. He does the same with the next pitch. Anyone who might be watching from behind the chain-link fence could be forgiven for thinking, terrible BP. But then the third pitch goes to that same area between first and second. Then the next. While some of his teammates came here to put on a show, Seager is working base hits off a batting-practice pitcher.

He's in his third big league spring training, but there are still glimmers of the kid inside. After practice at lunch -- mini chicken-bacon-ranch pizza and clam chowder that he washes down with two Mountain Dews -- Seager says he's excited about the sub shop near his place in Arizona. He talks about a great chocolate cake in Oklahoma City and how he got Sandy Koufax's autograph for his dad. He chews a lot of gum during games, exclusively Big League Chew's Outta' Here Original ("the official bubble gum of Ripken Baseball"). He tried Ground Ball Grape once in high school and hit four grounders to the second baseman. "Never again," he says.

Seager tells a story from late in 2015, when the Dodgers were working to maintain an 8½-game lead over the Giants in the NL West. He committed two errors in one inning behind Kershaw and apologized to the pitcher after the game. "I was so scared," Seager says. "He's all, 'Dude, don't worry about it,' and I'm telling him it doesn't happen, it shouldn't happen -- not to him." Then there was the time this past fall, after he won the Rookie of the Year in New York, when he wrapped his plaque in his coat and stuffed it into his backpack before getting on the plane. "I was stopped at airport security because it looked suspicious," he says with a laugh. "I think they thought it was a bomb." When he got to his town home in North Carolina, Seager couldn't decide where to display it. He put it on his bedroom floor.

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After he was invited to Dodgers big league camp in the spring of 2015, Seager talked to his oldest brother. Kyle had simple advice: Stay out of the way. In Arizona, Seager sometimes showed up in the batting cage before 7 a.m., mindful that veteran players were creatures of habit. "You don't want a guy mad at you over something as stupid as hitting when he usually hits," he says. "I walked in the shadows." Jimmy Rollins was the starter at shortstop, by then a 36-year-old who'd won an MVP and a World Series ring with the Phillies. On the field during practices, Seager studied Rollins' every move -- his setup before the pitch, his release of the ball to first base -- and listened whenever Rollins dispensed tips on how to play around the bag, how to get rid of the ball quickly.

Seager committed 13 errors in Triple-A and five more in 21 games at short for the Dodgers that year. The next season, he arrived at spring training ready to throw himself into fielding. "Corey wanted it," Roberts says. "He'd heard the people who said he'd have to come off shortstop someday. When you're a great player, there has to be something that fuels you. For Corey, that was shortstop defense."

Last year he worked every day with Dodgers coach Chris Woodward, who'd also spent time with Kyle in Seattle. Seager improved his arm slot, which made him more consistent on throws to first base. He learned how to take better routes to the ball, to play deeper and use his size to help his range. When he was waiting to hit during a game, he'd watch the opposing shortstop. Between innings these days, he might pull up video and check out his positioning or how he anticipates where the ball will go.

The Dodgers' preparation before games includes a scouting report that lists opposing players' tendencies and where the defense should position itself when a certain guy gets a two-strike fastball low and away, or where to stand with one strike and a breaking ball coming. The advancements in metrics have helped Seager's prepitch movements, which he says has given him confidence he'll be in the right place when a ball's hit -- or at least close enough. "They basically position us to catch the ball 4 feet to our left or right, so we don't have to cover the entire infield," he says. "We like the percentages. Let me get to the 70 percent, and let the others go through. I don't have to go 20 feet to get a ball. That's helped me a lot."

According to FanGraphs' ultimate zone rating, Seager's shortstop defense was borderline elite last year. The Fielding Bible's defensive runs saved metric is less charitable but still lists Seager as average with the glove. However you look at the numbers, he's hardly been a failure at the position. Which, one suspects, offers small respite from the voices of doubt inside his head. He describes his response to making last year's All-Star Game as a "sigh of relief." It reinforced everything he'd done at his position to that point -- the time he'd dedicated to making himself better. "I proved I could do it," he says.

When Corey Seager thinks back to the day he was drafted almost five years ago, there's one thing that sticks in his mind. Among the questions he got from the media that night was whether he was ready to move to third base. "People who never saw me play looked at a paper, saw I was 6-4 and said I needed to move," he says, almost spitting the words -- as if there's something, finally, he's no longer afraid to say: "If someone legit had seen me and then said I couldn't play short, I could accept that. But to so many others, I was moving because of my size. That bothered me, because I'm a shortstop.

"This is who I am."