MLB: Justin Turner Signs with the Red Sox
Last weekend, I posted on Twitter that because I had a calendar and a functioning brain, I knew Chaim Bloom and the Red Sox would be making additional moves to supplement the 2023 roster before Opening Day.
Not that I thought they’d be big moves, nor that they’d be great moves, nor that everyone would universally love them. I was just saying that the roster wasn’t complete and that more moves were coming.
This set off numerous responses including one person who said that I apparently do Bloom’s laundry for him (???). It’s safe to say some Red Sox fans on the Internet are on edge and don’t have even the basest level of faith in the team coming off a 78-win season.
On Sunday, it turned out my observation of fact was, in fact…err…a fact. In news first reported by Chris Henrique of Beyond the Monster, the Red Sox signed longtime Dodgers 3B Justin Turner to a one-year contract with a 2nd-year player option for a total outlay of $22M. Once the Red Sox DFA’d Eric Hosmer during the week, it became clear a move like this was coming.
Turner fills the hole left behind by J.D. Martinez, who effectively switched places by signing with the Dodgers Sunday for one year and $10M. Chad Jennings reported from a Red Sox source that Turner will be a “DH/1B” next season, but it’s hard for me to imagine he’s totally done playing 3B for reasons I will discuss.
In 2022, Turner played 128 games, hitting 13 HRs, slashing .278/.350/.438 with a 116 OPS+. Turner was at his best after June 30, slashing .340/.412/.515 in 58 games.
When I wrote about righty power bats the Red Sox could pursue last week, I didn’t go deep on Turner in part because his profile at age 38 doesn’t include as much hard contact as it once did. But, he still does hit the ball hard, which we know the Red Sox want.
Turner finished 2022 in the 61st percentile in average exit velo, 54th in HardHit% and 52nd in Barrel%. These were still in the top half of all MLB hitters, but his average exit velo and HardHit% were down from 79th and 60th percentile in 2021.
Most of his other peripherals were about the same both years: 75th percentile in xwOBA, 82nd in xBA, 69th in xSLG, 78th in K%, 66th in BB%. His K rate of 16.7% and BB rate of 9.4% were both better than the league averages of 22.4% and 8.2%, respectively. All this means that his value isn’t completely tied up in power, which is critical for any hitter in their late 30s.
Make no mistake: Turner is in decline. But there’s no reason why he can’t continue to be an effective hitter and a very important presence in the lineup for the Red Sox in 2023 and maybe 2024.
Some more thoughts:
The defensive fit. The Red Sox have a 3B and his name is Rafael Devers. Turner has played the vast majority of his MLB games at 3B and, despite the aforementioned Jennings report, has just 39 games in his career at 1B. His 3B defense has declined some, but he was just -2 Outs Above Average there in 2022, which isn’t exactly terrible (for all his improvements, that’s also where Devers landed in 2022).
We’ll likely hear the exact plan from Bloom when the deal becomes official. Turner’s most likely role to me is DHing almost every day, filling in for rookie Triston Casas at 1B against tough lefties or to give him a day off, and helping Devers stay off his feet by filling in at 3B so Devers can DH and stay in the lineup.
The latter is why the Red Sox said all offseason that they wanted a DH who could play a position in the field. Devers was hurt most of the second half and was still in there most every day, at 3B, because Martinez was incapable of playing LF. Alex Cora did not want a repeat of that.
Additionally, I have a feeling the Bobby Dalbec era in Boston will be over fairly soon, given how the Turner signing is being framed thus far.
A team that makes contact. I mentioned Turner’s ability to make contact, an ability that comes with higher-than-average hard hit rates. Between this and the signing of Masataka Yoshida, one of Japan’s premiere contact hitters, the direction of the team on offense seems clear.
Built in the image of their manager, the 2023 Red Sox may not hit the most HRs in MLB, but there should be plenty of guys who put the bat on the ball, get on base, and don’t strike out as much as past Boston teams.
In the best versions of themselves, Yoshida, Turner, Kiké Hernandez and Alex Verdugo will make lots of contact and K less than league average. Devers and Trevor Story will K a lot, but you live with it because they mash. Casas will probably K a fair amount, but he’ll be on base because of his approach. I was even impressed at the end of last season with Reese McGuire’s ability to put the bat on the ball.
This feels like an acknowledgement of, and reaction to, the new rules coming to MLB in 2023. With shifting now banned, there will be more holes in defenses and increased opportunity for contact-oriented hitters to make their mark. While most of the guys on the Sox aren’t burners, having a higher OBP team should also mean more steals thanks to the bigger bases.
The clubhouse dynamic. It’s become something of a running joke that Bloom likes to get players who played in LA for his old boss, Andrew Friedman. It turns out the Dodgers have a lot of good players, so they’re worth getting!
Turner joins Hernandez, Verdugo and new signees Kenley Jansen and Chris Martin as ex-Dodgers on the 2023 Red Sox. Expect some new…interesting…dugout celebrations.
One of the major draws of acquiring Turner is the respect and love he engenders from his peers. Turner should be part of a very new clubhouse culture here with a lot of new players. In 2022, Turner won the prestigious MLB Roberto Clemente Award, given to the player who “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team.”
Now, this is not to say the guys on the 2022 Red Sox were in anyway bad citizens, but I think a publicly unstated goal of the front office this winter has been to change the clubhouse dynamic.
The Red Sox had a ton of free agents on expiring deals after 2022. Besides making Xander Bogaerts an offer they felt comfortable extending that got blown away by over $100M, they’ve made tepid-at-best attempts to bring back their own free agents. Despite really needing at least one more starting pitcher, they even seem fine with letting Nathan Eovaldi go and collecting a draft pick if someone else wants to lose their own 2nd round pick to sign him.
There was a lot of public whining and moping about things that happened during the 2022 season. There were many reasons for this, some inflicted directly by questionable team decisions, including Bogaerts’ reaction to his pathetic spring training extension offer.
This stuff happens in baseball — relationships run their course, and teams decide it’s better to break up certain groups for different reasons. It’s no one person or entities’ fault. It’s a good thing to bring in fresh voices and perspectives. But for players who really struggled in 2022 to not only win but also play the game correctly, I got the sense many of them were looking for others to blame for their own failures.
For the front office, the last straw may have been the Kevin Plawecki situation. Bloom acknowledged that the decision to DFA him in September was an agonizing one, brought on by a desire to give McGuire and Connor Wong more playing time, and the fact that September rosters are now 12 players smaller than they were before (which is something the players union agreed to in the new CBA).
It’s understandable players would be upset after Plawecki was let go. But what was cringey and embarrassing was their decision to blare “Dancing On My Own” — the Sox 2021 playoff theme song that was also Plawecki’s walk-up song for a time — from the clubhouse the day after the DFAing, in what was described by local media as intending to send some kind of message to the front office. Mind you, the Red Sox were a 70–75 team when this happened.
In one of his better columns of the season, John Tomase wrote this the next day:
Bloom’s not the reason Plawecki is calling it a season two weeks early. His players are. Remain in contention, and the veteran backup catcher isn’t going anywhere. Finish in last place, and it would be a dereliction of duty not to cut him in favor of assessing a Triple-A reliever like Franklin German.
We’ve rightly focused on front-office missteps as driving the dive to the bottom of the American League East. Shorting the bullpen, ignoring first base, trusting injury-prone starters — all were self-inflicted wounds that helped doom the season.
But there’s another issue we’ve spent far less time dissecting, and the reaction to Plawecki’s departure crystallizes it perfectly. It’s this undercurrent of victimization and grievance that has left the clubhouse feeling like it plays no part in the results on the field.
So, if you’re wondering why some players aren’t back for 2023, I’d say the above is at least part of the reason why.
What’s next? At the basest level, the Red Sox will add an “up the middle” hitter from outside the organization, and I suspect at least one starting pitcher and hopefully more.
The trade market has gone nowhere, and maybe won’t at this point until after the 1st of the year. We’ll see if that’s where Bloom can make the biggest improvements to the team.
Oh, and the Red Sox need to send a flotilla of Brinks trucks to Devers’ house in the Dominican. Maybe, just maybe, that’s coming. Here’s hoping.
