Trea Turner is good at defense again

It’s been a work in progress

Quick: without looking, how many seasons has Trea Turner had in a row with a negative FRV (Fielding Run Value) according to Baseball Savant?

If you guessed that he has had a negative FRV the two seasons prior to this, you would be correct. Since putting ink to contract to make Philadelphia his home, Turner, at least by the advanced numbers, has slipped from his perch of being a slightly above average defensive shortstop to being below average according to FRV.

It was the topic of focus for Turner this offseason and spring training. He put in hours of work with Bobby Dickerson in order to get himself back to being one of the better shortstops with the glove, both in the ledger and in the minds of people who watch the team. He spoke about the need for him to get back to that form.

“I think that’s what I struggled with my first year (with the Phillies),” Turner said. “I knew I wasn’t the greatest defender ever, but at the same time, I didn’t think I was bad. I thought I was pretty average…But now, at this point in my career, I just want to get better. I don’t even care what somebody says about me anymore. Obviously, it’s annoying. But if I just play better, they can’t say anything. Right? So it definitely still motivates me. Definitely still bugs me. But now it’s more personal with myself than it is about somebody else saying it about me.”

At this point in the season at least, it looks like the work he put in with infield coach Bobby Dickerson is starting pay off some.

Now, early season stats are notoriously fickle things. What might be good one day turns into something very different days later. It can be like that with a lot of the numbers, but with fielding stats, it seems like they can stabilize early. Unless there are games where a player just makes error after error after error, players will get positive numbers and stay positive. In this day and age of official scorers being better gift givers than Santa Claus when it comes to deciding whether something is a hit or an error, that holds doubly true.

So far, Turner has seen his defensive stats come back to the positive side of things. Depending on your statistic of choice, that is.

Personally, I tend to rely on those numbers spit out by Baseball Savant. They’re the numbers that are being measure using the same technology that allows us to identify spin axis on a pitch, so feeling that they’re accurate and trustworthy is a decent assumption. By FRV and OAA (Outs Above Average), Turner has stepped up his game.

Move over into other realms of defensive statistics, Turner is not faring as well. Using Fangraphs, Turner is faring a bit more poorly by DRS (Defensive Runs Saved) as compared to his peers. There isn’t enough of a breadth of work to be able to see how he fares by UZR/150, so guessing at that number seems a bit more foolhardy. Go behind the scenes at a paywalled site like Baseball Prospectus and we see another version of Turner in terms of DRP, Defensive Runs Prevented. There, Turner has a 0, as in zero defensive runs prevented….but so do all shortstops for this season. The scope of the season has yet to unfold, so there isn’t enough data.

Still, using all of what we have now, we can pretty safely say that he has been better this year than in the past. He’s passing the statistical analysis test, but also passes the eye test. It has been less of a burden to watch him play shortstop than the past two years, propping up the belief that he will be able to handle the position for a few years longer. The throws that he’s making seem to be done with more confidence. The other night, Ben Davis noted that it looks like Turner is throwing the ball “through the first baseman” as opposed to simply trying to get it to him. Anyone who has ever played baseball beyond t-ball knows this premise and will attest to it. Everything about him seems more confident in the field.

Can he keep it up? That remains the question. Long term, the team would have considered a position change had this year gone south defensively and, let’s not kid ourselves, it very well could still do so. The seemingly hard charging Aidan Miller, Turner’s primary competition for the spot, looks like he is having a more difficult adjustment to higher minor leagues and will require probably more time for seasoning. However, the work Turner has done will probably continue, putting in a position to keep improving at the position.

It’s been a nice change to see.