MIAMI — Trea Turner stepped back to create a longer, more playable hop. Then, he fielded the ball on his backhand, planted his front foot, and uncorked a balanced, overhand throw to first base.
It all looked so … routine.
And that was Bobby Dickerson’s point.
In citing that play, the final out of a 3-2 Phillies victory on Aug. 24 at Citizens Bank Park, as an example of Turner’s vastly improved defense this season, Dickerson highlighted the biggest difference in the 32-year-old shortstop.
» READ MORE: The Phillies set goals for Trea Turner in 2025, and he has bought in: ‘He’s doing everything we asked’
“People say, ‘Oh, he’s supposed to make that play,’” said Dickerson, the Phillies’ high-energy infield coach. “If you go back and look at it a million times, if he comes to it a little bit, the ball bites him. It eats him up. He drop-steps, the ball bit still, but he’s able to catch it, transfer it, and get it underway accurately with a good runner [Nationals’ Dylan Crews] running.
“Calm. Convincing. There was no panic to the play. Nobody was holding their breath. And it was a game-ending play. That’s big stuff, to me.”
A decade into his major league career, three seasons into an 11-year contract with the Phillies, Turner is making the plays he’s expected to make with more regularity than ever. Sprinkle in a few SportsCenter-worthy highlights — did you catch his diving stop Monday in Milwaukee? — and it’s plain to see that he’s been among the most improved defenders in the sport.
Don’t believe your eyes? Quantifying defense is often inexact, even in the analytics age. Dickerson, as traditional as coaches get, is skeptical of most defensive metrics. But in Turner’s case, the alphabet soup of data — OAA, DRS, UZR, take your pick — corroborates the eye test.
Entering the weekend, Turner ranked fourth among shortstops in Statcast’s fielding run value (10 runs above average) after finishing next-to-last (12 runs below average) over the last two seasons combined. He was also fourth in outs above average (15), according to Statcast, a 24-run improvement from the last two years.
“I always thought physically I could do it,” Turner said before a game the other day. “I always saw a vision. I always put the work in. It’s not a lack of effort and all that. It’s a matter of doing what I’m doing this year. It was a matter of executing.”
Turner’s improvement may not translate into a Gold Glove. (The Cardinals’ Mason Wynn is likely the favorite among National League shortstops.) But it has turned him into a sure-fire MVP candidate.
Although it’s Kyle Schwarber who routinely gets serenaded with “M-V-P!” chants at Citizens Bank Park for threatening Ryan Howard’s single-season franchise record of 58 home runs (Schwarber was at 49 through Thursday), Turner quietly led the league in hits (174), steals (36), batting average (. 301), and wins above replacement (6.3, as calculated by Fangraphs).
» READ MORE: Kyle Schwarber has a strong MVP case. History shows being a DH will likely cost him.
Turner could be the first Phillies player since Chase Utley in 2006 to bat .300 with 100 runs and 200 hits. Add in the steals and homers (14 and counting), and he could be the second player in team history — and the first since Ed Delahanty in 1893 — to go .300/100/200/30/15.
“Look, we know what Schwarber’s done for this team, but I tell you what, Trea Turner, where would we be without Trea Turner?” Dickerson said. “He’s a very impactful player for us.”
And it’s the defense that stands out. Especially considering the narrative over the last two years and in spring training.
“People have been in a hurry to rush him off of shortstop,“ Dickerson said.
It made sense, given the unforgiving aging curve for shortstops and Turner’s previous shortcomings. The Phillies weren’t there yet last offseason, but the topic of whether Turner had to go to another position — second base? left field? — was getting closer to coming up — and sooner than they expected when they signed him after the 2022 season.
Instead, Turner has shushed everyone by playing shortstop as artfully than ever. Let’s dive into how he has managed to improve at this point in his career.
Breaking old habits
Everyone knows that Turner runs fast. He also talks and thinks fast.
And for years, he tried to play defense fast.
“I feel like I used to read a swing, see the ball, and then kind of make my decision probably somewhere in the grass,” Turner said. “And then if the ball did anything that I didn’t expect, I was kind of in a bad spot. Sometimes I’d be right, but then at times I was wrong. It was tough.”
Turner brought that approach with him to the Phillies. Like most bad habits, it was hard to break, even amid the hundreds of grounders that Dickerson hit to him on the half-field in spring training and before games over the last two seasons.
» READ MORE: From January 2023: What the shortstop aging curve means for the Phillies’ 11-year contract with Trea Turner
In 2023, Turner led the majors with 23 errors, the most by a Phillies shortstop since Desi Relaford’s 24 flubs in 1998. But Turner’s issues at the plate that season were even more profound.
Dickerson, 60, is highly esteemed as an infield coach, with a list of pupils that includes J.J. Hardy and Manny Machado with the Orioles and Fernando Tatis Jr. with the Padres. He taught Bryce Harper to play first base on the fly in 2023 and helped turn Alec Bohm into a steady third baseman.
With a mixture of encouragement and trash talk, slathered in a Mississippi roux, Dickerson drills the infielders almost daily. But amid the worst slump of Turner’s career in 2023, Dickerson picked his spots carefully.
Last year, Dickerson and iconic former Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa put Turner through infield boot camp in spring training. They stressed “slowing the game down,” in Dickerson’s words, and tried to iron out some fundamentals. It translated to improved defense early in the season.
Then, Turner strained his left hamstring in May and missed 39 games. He wasn’t the same upon his return. On the bases, he attempted only 12 steals the rest of the season. In the field, he reverted to old habits.
This season, Turner is once again the fastest player in the sport. He leads the majors in sprint speed at 30.3 feet per second, remarkably the same time that he posted in 2017 as a 24-year-old with the Nationals.
But Dickerson has finally gotten Turner to slow down on defense. Rather than focusing on the speed of his first step and rushing to the ball, Turner is moving more efficiently and giving himself more time to react.
» READ MORE: From April 2024: Trea Turner wants to play shortstop for as long as he can. And that means the work never ends.
The result: His feet have been in position to create better hops that enable him to make plays more consistently on balls that are hit right at him, where he chooses to field them on his forehand, backhand, or straight-on.
“Every ball you catch should be in one of those three positions, unless you’re on the run, and I feel like I’ve been able to do those positions more consistently,” Turner said. “When you catch the ball in a better spot, too, the throws become better. It’s all kind of in how you attack the ball. I think I’ve changed in that aspect.
“I feel like I’m hunting the ball more and tracking the ball more the whole entire way, and I have the ability to make my decision later. There’s plenty of shortstops that aren’t as fast as me, and I always thought that maybe could help me. I feel like I’ve been able to obviously keep the speed but then kind of slow down those movements.”
Open to changes
After last season, the Phillies challenged Turner to transform himself at the plate. They asked him to focus on swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone, reaching base at a higher rate, and creating havoc with his speed.
Check. Check. And check.
Turner is poised to finish with his best on-base percentage since 2021 and his most steals since at least 2018. He took over the leadoff spot in June, and with Schwarber and Harper behind him, he has set the table better than a waiter at the fanciest restaurant in town.
With those adjustments, and his improvement on defense, Turner has reinvented himself at a stage of his career when most star players are set in their ways.
» READ MORE: Andrew Painter has taken his lumps in triple-A. There’s still a benefit to bringing him to the majors in September.
“He deserves a lot of credit, along with Bobby Dickerson,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “Because Bobby is the one that has said, ‘He can be better, he can be better, he can be better,’ and they worked and worked and worked.
“I’m really proud of [Turner], and I really think that he’s the type of player, he’s going to continue to be athletic with his body. He’s going to be able to keep those skills for a longer time period than the average athlete would be.”
Said Dickerson: “Larry Bowa says, ‘It takes one [mistake] to get a reputation. It takes a career to erase it.’ And that’s what Trea’s dealing with. He’s got to change the reputation from not being a very good defender, which, in my opinion, he has.”
Turner is coachable. But he’s also intelligent and inquisitive. He’s open to feedback, although he has to believe in the proposed changes.
Dickerson and Turner acknowledge that it took time for them to mesh in the same way that Turner has come to trust, say, hitting coach Kevin Long, with whom he worked in Washington.
“I’ve never really been scared to try something,” Turner said. “Kevin will tell you that firsthand. I try to find what works, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll move on and go to the next thing.
“At the same time, though, I’m not just going to blindly agree with everything. It’s got to make sense in my head, and I’ve got to be able to apply it on my own.”
Turner feels the same way about staying at shortstop. He was drafted as a shortstop and came to the majors playing the position. He isn’t interested in switching now — under one self-imposed condition.
“I don’t want to just play it. I want to play it well,“ he said. ”I want to play short as long as I possibly can — hopefully the whole contract — but play it well, too. And if you play it well, those questions and answers become pretty easy.”
