Phillies’ Trea Turner on his slow start: The game has ‘kicked my butt,’ but he knows a turnaround is coming

For three days this week, Trea Turner dressed at a locker along the far wall of the visitors’ clubhouse at Tropicana Field. To his left, one stall away at the end of the row, sat Nick Castellanos.

How’s that for symbolism?

Castellanos will travel to Seattle on Sunday night to represent the Phillies at the All-Star Game. It’s a well-deserved honor. Entering the weekend, he led the team in batting average (.305), hits (102), doubles (26), and on-base plus slugging (.853), and ranked second in home runs (13) and RBIs (55).

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But Castellanos’ tale can’t be told without dredging up last season. After signing a $100 million contract in spring training, he never felt comfortable with a new team in a new city. The expectations to produce were like an anchor around his foot. He had the worst season of his career — in the Philadelphia sports fishbowl, no less.

A year later, Turner is heading down that path. The Phillies signed him for 11 years and $300 million because, as president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told owner John Middleton, he’s one of the 10 best players in baseball. But through Thursday, Turner was batting .250/.303/.388, far off his career .297/.350/.478 marks. His defense dipped, too, to four runs saved below the average shortstop compared to five runs above average.

Here’s the thing: Turner isn’t alone.

Of the seven players in last winter’s free-agent class who signed for at least $150 million, only Aaron Judge and Dansby Swanson were named All-Stars, though both are injured — and Judge stayed with the Yankees rather than signing elsewhere. Xander Bogaerts and Carlos Correa, $200 million-plus shortstops, had subpar first halves for the Padres and Twins, respectively. The Cardinals regret signing catcher Willson Contreras. First baseman José Abreu has been dreadful for the Astros.

So, maybe Turner’s struggles say less about him than the inherent challenges of being a big-name free agent in a new place.

“I feel like I’ve heard that a lot these last two, three months, but me personally, I haven’t felt that,” Turner told The Inquirer in a lengthy interview this week. “I don’t know how those other guys feel. Maybe they do or don’t feel that way. And maybe there is something to it. I don’t know if there’s an adjustment period. It’s hard to answer.

“But I’ve played in big markets, I’ve played all over. If that wasn’t the case, maybe it would be different. I’ve just underperformed individually. I just haven’t done it at the level that I’m accustomed to.”

» READ MORE: Trea Turner’s path to Phillies’ $300 million man began as a baby-faced freshman at N.C. State

Turner, who turned 30 last week, is confident he will turn it around in the second half. His track record would strongly suggest it.

But whatever happens over the final 73 games, this much is clear: 2023 Turner isn’t 2022 Castellanos.

Kyle Schwarber remembers his reaction when he heard that the Phillies reached an agreement with Turner.

“I told someone, ‘If there was a fit for a team where a guy would come in and feel like he didn’t miss a beat, it would be this,’” the Phillies slugger said. “He fits exactly the personalities in here.”

Not only did Turner play with Bryce Harper for four seasons and Schwarber for part of one with the Nationals, but he also worked with hitting coach Kevin Long. He has the same agent as J.T. Realmuto and played with him in All-Star Games.

It hardly mattered that Turner was new to a team that built a distinctive culture last year during an unexpected run to the World Series. He came from the outside but was hardly an outsider. Before he even set foot in the clubhouse, he was one of the boys.

“Part of me almost thinks it’s been too easy,” Turner said. “Would that uncomfortable feeling make me perform better? I’ve thought about that a little bit. But no, I feel really good here. My family’s happy. I’m happy.”

Turner also is familiar with the upheaval of changing teams. He has been traded twice in the middle of a season, the first time under the most unusual of circumstances.

» READ MORE: Turner, the WBC’s brightest star, makes his high school coach flash back to the beginning

In 2014, the Padres drafted Turner but packaged him in an offseason trade to the Nationals. At the time, draftees couldn’t be dealt until one year after signing, so the teams agreed that Turner would be a “player to be named later.” He went to spring training with the Padres in 2015 and spent the first two months of the season in their farm system despite knowing he would be switching organizations.

Through it all, Turner batted .322/.385/.471 in 58 games for San Diego’s double-A club and .322/.354/.411 in 58 games between double A and triple A with Washington.

In 2021, two years removed from winning the World Series, the Nationals shipped out Turner and Max Scherzer in a blockbuster that was expected to deliver the Dodgers a second consecutive World Series title. They wound up losing in the National League Championship Series, but Turner batted .338/.385/.565 with 10 homers in 52 games after the trade.

Surely there was more pressure to produce in that situation than coming to a new team in free agency.

“That’s what I think, too,” Turner said. “Getting traded and being a big part of a team that’s traded for you to make a postseason run, I don’t know if it gets any more pressure than that.”

Turner, thoughtful and introspective, has considered all of this throughout his first few months with the Phillies.

His conclusion: “It’s a hard game,” he said. “And it’s kind of kicked my butt this year.”

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Admit it: You thought Turner’s two-out, game-tying home run in the ninth inning on May 24 at Citizens Bank Park would launch him on a hot streak.

Turner did, too.

But he was batting .250/.295/.392 in 217 plate appearances through that home run. Since then, he hit .250/.313/.382 in 166 plate appearances entering the weekend.

“You always look for this one day and it just takes off, and I’m still looking for that, too,” Turner said. “I don’t think that’s how this game works.”

If anything, Turner’s signature is his consistency. Pick the statistical split — home vs. road, righties vs. lefties, leading off vs. batting second — and Turner’s numbers across the board are in line with his career averages.

“I kind of take pride in that,” he said. “I’ve never been like, 15-for-15, or 10 home runs in a week, just super hot. It’s just kind of, keep chugging along, keep chugging along, and at the end of the year, your numbers are there.”

Well, unless it’s the World Baseball Classic.

For six games in March, Turner morphed into Captain America. He went 9-for-23 (.391) with five homers and 11 RBIs to lead Team USA to the championship game against Japan and ratchet expectations for what he might do with the Phillies to absurd levels.

“Yeah, that was crazy,” Turner said. “But you could look it up: I don’t think I ever hit five homers in six games in my career. It was, not luck but just good timing. A week like that would be great now.”

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Turner has tried to recapture it by tinkering in the batting cage with Long. They’ve widened his stance, narrowed it, and widened it again. They’ve subtracted his leg kick, added it back, then took it out with two strikes. Turner is trying to be athletic at the plate while also keeping it simple.

It’s a never-ending process.

Turner recently had an eight-game run in which he went 11-for-32 with two doubles and a homer. He had back-to-back two-hit games this week against the Rays and banged a homer off the left-field foul pole. He’s running more, too, with seven stolen bases in the last 13 games after swiping only 13 bags in the first 72.

“You see spurts of who he really is, and you see these other spurts of stuff that you haven’t seen from him,” manager Rob Thomson said. “I’m hoping it all evens out and we see who he really is in the second half. My gut is that’s what we’re going to see at some point the good Trea Turner, the consistent .350-.360 on-base, hitting home runs, making plays in the field.”

Thomson checks in often with each player, and when he talks to Turner, he sees someone who is at ease in his surroundings but disappointed by his play.

“I don’t really sense any panic, but I sense frustration because he wants to do well,” Thomson said. “He wants to perform.”

Mostly, Turner just wants to be himself, and there’s little doubt about who that is. Over the last four seasons, he has batted .298, .335, .328, and .298, with an OPS of .850, .982, .911, and .809.

You can set your watch by it.

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“I can be one of the best players in the game,” Turner said. “I want to be what I’ve done in my career. You have thousands of at-bats. It’s who I am. I expect to be around those numbers. That’s what I did for, what, seven, eight years? I don’t expect to have a 1.200 OPS for two months, but I don’t expect to have a .600 OPS, either.

“Just hasn’t been up to that standard. I’m getting close, but I’ve got to do it.”