Phillies’ Trea Turner Struggling To Live Up To $300 Million Contract

The Philadelphia Phillies have been waiting all season for the payoff from their biggest acquisition of the offseason.

However, with two-thirds of the season gone, shortstop Trea Turner has yet to produce.

The Phillies have little doubt Turner can still be one of the premier players in baseball, which is the reason they signed him to a 11-year, $300-million contract as a free agent over the winter after their run to the World Series.

The dynamic 30-year-old starred for the United States in the World Baseball Classic in March and still possesses the speed, power and defense that made him one of the most coveted players on the open market.

Yet Turner is hitting just .235/.290/.368 with 10 home runs and 21 stolen bases in 107 games after being selected to the All-Star Game each of the previous two seasons. He is also playing poor in the field with minus-4 defensive runs saved while contributing just 0.9 bWAR.

No one is more disappointed about those statistics than Turner, who admits he has pressed at times to justify the Phillies’ $300-million investment.

“I never really thought we’d be here, but we are,” Turner said last weekend when the Phillies played the Pirates in Pittsburgh. “I’ve got to grind it out. I can’t get it all back in one day. I think the numbers at the end of the year, they are what they are. They’re going to be good, bad, in the middle, whatever. For me, it’s stack good days on top of each other. I haven’t been able to do that this year.”

Stacking has proven to be problematic for Turner in 2023. And it seems the harder he works then the worse things get.

An example of that came in Miami the last few days.

Turner went 0 for 5 on Wednesday night and made a key defensive mistake as the Phillies lost to the Marlins 9-8 in 12 innings at loanDepot Park. Despite the late finish and Thursday’s game scheduled to start at 12:10 p.m., Turner stayed at the ballpark past midnight taking batting practice in the stadium’s indoor cages with hitting coach Kevin Long.

Turner then went 0 for 3 on Thursday, though the Phillies won 4-2.

Phillies manager Rob Thomson had Turner hitting eighth, the lowest spot he has occupied in the batting order since he was a rookie in 2015 with the Washington Nationals. Thomson has tried Turner in different spots over the last week after dropping him out of the customary No. 2 hole. However, Turner is just 3 for 23 (.130) in those five games.

“I think he understood,” Thomson said when he dropped Turner in the order. ““I think he’s disappointed. Not because he’s hitting seventh, just because he’s not producing like he expects himself to produce.”

Turner says he fully understands Thomson’s decision.

Thomson has also thought about benching Turner for a couple of days in attempt to have clear his mind. However, Turner is near obsessive about not missing games. He leads the National League with 446 at-bats this season and has twice topped the NL in plate appearances.

Despite getting little production from Turner, the Phillies are in the thick of the pennant race. They trail the division-leading Atlanta Braves by 11 ½ games in the NL East but hold the second wild-card position, 1 ½ games behind the San Francisco and one game ahead of the Cincinnati Reds.

The Phillies signed Turner with the idea that he could be the player to push them over the top after they lost to the Houston Astros in six games in last year’s World Series. They still have that faith despite his .235 batting average.

“He just needs to breathe a bit, relax,” Thomson said. “He’s trying to do too much. I’ve said all along our best lineup is when he’s hitting and he’s hitting in the two spot. I just think we’ll produce the most runs that way.”