GDT: Braves @ Rangers 5/17 Finding our Stride(r)
- Thread starter bravesfanforlife88
- Start date
bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
holy crap.. he is doing this with a .346 babip and K'ing at 26% of the time. what the heck happened to him.
He used up the rest of his talent for the team USA run in the WBC
Hudson2
Well-known member
And Turner is the player I wanted this past offseason. AA is looking more like a genius now with Arcia for cheap. Some players get to comfortable after they get paid like Turner just did. Not saying that’s what happening to him but it’s possible.
striker42
Well-known member
It's pretty obvious and it's bad news for the Phils.
His bat is slowing down.
First clue is he's 30. Some guys can keep sufficient bat speed into their late 30s, others collapse close to their 30th birthday. Look at Dan Uggla. At 31, he came to Atlanta and his bat started slowing down. He still had two useful years left in him but he was clearly in decline.
Second clue, look at his infield fly percentage. When a guy's bat starts slowing down you see him start popping more balls straight up. His IFFB% the past three years has been 7.2% in 2020, 9.7% in 2021, and 6.4% last year. This year it jumped to 14.8%. Same thing happened to Uggla. His IFFB% was around 6-9% and when he came here it jumped to 11.9% and stayed high.
Next is his K rate. When guys bats start slowing they have to start cheating to get around on fastballs and so start their swings a split second sooner. This takes away that little bit of time to wait and recognize the pitch.
The lack of time to recognize the pitch is also confirmed by what he's swinging at. He's swinging at a few more pitches this year and pacing for the highest swing percentage of his career. Yet he's seen the rate of strikes he's swung at decrease while seeing the rate of pitches outside the zone increase to a career high. All this while seeing an almost identical percentage of pitches in the zone.
He's also making significantly less contact than he has at any point in his career.
Finally, his exit velocity is down a full MPH from last year. His EV over his career is almost exactly what you'd expect. It steadily increased in his early 20's. It peaked at just over 90 MPH when he was 26 and 27. And has eroded ever since. It dropped to 89.6 in 2021, 88.9 last year, and is down to 87.9% this year.
It's looking like his bat has probably been slowing for a couple years but was still plenty fast enough until this year. It may have hit that critical threshold where it's starting to cause him real problems.
I’m confident AA had looked at Turner’s declining discipline and swing stats and said “that kind of contract will be a disaster.” Amazing how the Phillies don’t seem to do their basic homework. Taijuan Walker too. They were sure they were getting an upgrade over Kyle Gibson despite the most basic analytics showing them as similar pitchers. Nope, they go ahead and say the biggest number anyway.
bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
yeah, I thought his contract was probably the best of the bunch. It wasn't a crazy high AVV for a star player. I also thought he would age a bit more gracefully. That said, this all could be a swing tweak away from being the old Turner.
Hudson2
Well-known member
It means good news for us. That 11 year deal is gonna be an absolute anchor
Phillies are going nowhere fast.
It’s either steady or drastic declines in some important areas though over the last four seasons. Not just a 2023 issue. His offense has been trending down for years. I don’t think he’s THIS bad but “the old Turner” seems pretty unlikely.
That AAV is going to feel like a lot to Philly if/when he continues to decline. This is year one of eleven.
New GM, same as the old GM.
The power outages of their “stud” prospects is also pretty funny. They’re a mess.
LMAO! I totally did not realize it was an 11 year contract. He may not even be playable by the end of year 3. What an absolutely horrible deal. I get teams not wanting to pay the luxury tax, but long term, you're better off paying a guy 50 million a year for 6 years than 30 million per year for 10.
But I suppose if you don't plan on being the GM in 5-6 years then you probably don't care how it affects the payroll in years 6-10. And the 2 of the last 3 previous Philly GMs didn't make it past year 5. None of their last 4 GMs made it past year 8.
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They still have Castellanos for 3 years after this one, Schwarber for 2 more, Walker for 3, Realmuto for 2. Meanwhile, Hoskins is a FA after this season, as is Nola, and Wheeler is after next season. To boot, they don’t have much in the farm especially position player-wise and the young guys on their major league team haven’t shown signs of being anything more than role players at best. Things are not looking good for them.
bravesfanforlife88
Well-known member
Could easily become what the Nationals were a few years ago with aging veterans on massive contracts
They better win a WS then.
I love ****ting on the Phillies because every offseason they make splashes and think saying the biggest number to a FA is a skill and then they’re mediocre or slightly better than the year before and their fans are super confused why they’re not taking the league by storm.
bravesfanforlife88
Well-known member
As a Phillie fan, i'd be pissed seeing the talent level they have on the field vs what the Braves have. Harris II, Acuna, Murphy, Albies, Riley, etc. Going to be a brutal stretch of baseball in the east.
Heyward
<B>Voted Worst Poster <br>'13, '14, '15 (Co-Winner
They have Painter and Abel potentially replacing Wheeler/Nola if they wont pay them. IF.
bravesfanforlife88
Well-known member
I still think they get Nola resigned But i'd love to pick him up if they don't and we let Morton sail off into the sunset.
CyYoung31
Shift Leader
This is what irritated me about their WS run last year. They’ve been one of the worst run organizations in baseball for a decade now and they got rewarded for it because Manfred had to have nearly half the league make the postseason.