PEORIA, Ariz. -- The most underrated player in the major leagues is fine with being called the most underrated player in the major leagues.

"That would be alright with me," says Seattle Mariners third baseman Kyle Seager. "I don’t mind that. I don’t try to seek too much of the attention. I’m really happy with what we have here."

Seager ranks 56th on the ESPN #BBTN100 ranking of the top 100 players in the majors -- behind five relief pitchers, two designated hitters, one player who missed all of 2014 and several others who weren’t nearly as valuable. He posted 5.8 Wins Above Replacement via Baseball-Reference.com, tied for 15th among position players and 23rd among all players, a higher WAR than Jose Abreu, Yasiel Puig, Victor Martinez or Buster Posey. He hit .268/.334/.454 with 25 home runs and 96 RBIs and won a Gold Glove, and the Mariners missed the playoffs by just one game, but Seager received just one lonely 10th-place vote in the MVP voting.

He’s an easy guy to miss. The Mariners have the second-longest playoff drought in the majors. They play on the West Coast. Seager wasn’t hyped up coming through the minors. He has power, but not power. His batting numbers don’t blow you away, but they come in Safeco Field, where offense can be difficult to come by. He won the Gold Glove, but that was more for his consistency and reliability -- he made just eight errors -- than his flashy style of play.

Ask him about himself or his goals for 2015 and he’d rather talk about the team. Ask him about the Mariners being a popular playoff and even World Series pick and he says, "I pay a lot less attention to that than you think. I don’t have any of the social media stuff. We know what we have in the locker room. We know it’s exciting. But you have to put first things first. We haven’t been to the playoffs in a long time."

For Seager, it’s all about the drive for continued improvement, the drive that turned him from a third-round pick out of North Carolina who projected as a utility infielder into an All-Star third baseman who signed a $100 million contract extension in the offseason. When the Mariners held a news conference to announce the extension, general manager Jack Zduriencik said, "A player can change the destiny of an organization and you never really know where it comes." Manager Lloyd McClendon praised Seager as a player who could win an MVP Award. Seager said his next purchase would be a new truck -- a toy truck for his 1-year-old son, Crue.

At North Carolina, Seager played in the shadow of Dustin Ackley, whom the Mariners drafted second overall in 2009. While scouting Ackley, a player praised as one of the best pure college hitters in years, local scout Rob Mummau and scouting director Tom McNamara fell in love with Seager. Ackley hit .417 with 22 home runs his junior season; Seager hit .393 but with just six home runs, his power potential was questioned. When the Mariners moved Ackley to second base as a professional, Seager knew he had to adjust his game.

"You have to be realistic with yourself," he says. "Coming to the minors as a second baseman, Ackley was ahead of me, so the chance for me to get on the field was as a third baseman, there was an opening, so the reality of it was for me to stick in the big leagues I needed to get stronger, figure out how to use my body more to generate more power. And by power, not just home runs, but just hit the ball harder."

The hitting ability had always been there. In this day when power is encouraged at the expense of strikeouts and batting average, Seager could always hit. A high school scouting report from perfectgame.org reads, "While Seager's raw physical tools are pretty average, his hitting ability is something special. Seager is a left handed hitter who can flat rake. He has very quick hands and a short path to the ball, which creates very consistent solid line drive contact. Seager can it the ball hard to all fields but he's also shown us that he can turn on the ball and pull it with some power if that's what the pitch and situation dictates. He's a very polished hitter who is going to be successful at the plate way up the baseball ladder."

His draft-year profile from Baseball America read, "Seager is an area scout favorite, not to mention a player opposing coaches respect immensely. National evaluators have a harder time pegging him because he doesn't fit a neat profile. His best tool is his bat. He has a smooth, balanced swing and makes consistent contact with gap power."

In his first full season after getting drafted, he led the minors with 195 hits, the most by a minor leaguer since 2002. Still, he barely cracked the Mariners’ top 10 prospects list, let alone any top-100 lists across the sport. Listed at 6 feet on the Mariners' website, Seager is probably more like 5-foot-10. That didn't fit the classic look of a third baseman. Seager added a little bulk, worked on his swing to add more loft, and believed in himself with a quiet confidence.

He’s still working on that swing. Last year, he got off to a slow start, hitting .156 with no home runs through his first 19 games. The past two seasons, his average has dipped in August and September. He wants to avoid the slow start, and develop more consistency and hitting the ball with more authority to all fields (he pulled all 25 of his home runs). His spring training is full of work off the batting tee, flips in the cages and lots of BP. Seager's quick, short stroke allows him to turn on pitches up in the zone, as seen in the heat map. Conventional wisdom says lefties are usually better low-ball hitters. So Seager would like to improve on pitches down in the zone as well.

"Just trying to be a more complete hitter," Seager says. "Trying to get in better positions, letting your body get in position where it will work more clean and be comfortable throughout the season." He references teammate Robinson Cano. "Maybe when you put up Cano-like numbers, you have a little less to work on."

That work ethic is one reason teammates respect him. "I’ve only been here one season," infielder Willie Bloomquist said. "But that’s why I was really happy for him when he won the Gold Glove, because I saw all the work he put into improving his defense."

Seager is so underrated that his younger brother Corey, one of the top prospects in the minors, has garnered more attention this spring (another brother, Justin, is in the minors with the Mariners). Corey Seager is a strapping 6-foot-4 shortstop with power potential and the limelight of the Dodgers in his future. The brothers go back home to North Carolina in the offseason, but with a seven-year age gap, Kyle has rarely seen Corey play live. The Dodgers and Mariners played each other twice this spring, but Corey didn’t suit up in either game.

"That’s the weird thing of it," Kyle said. "I’ve worked out with him, I know his swing, I know his ins-and-outs, what makes him click. I’ve watched a lot of film. I might mess this up, but the last time I remember sitting and watching him play was probably when he was in high school, when I was in college."

He does have big-brother privileges, however. This spring, he had Corey babysit Crue so he and his wife Julie were freed up for a night out.

No doubt he went unrecognized.