2017 Pod Projections: Trea Turner

The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

2017 Pod Projections Index:
Lance McCullers
David Dahl
Keon Broxton

Last night, I needed some inspiration. Who would be tomorrow’s Pod Projection? So I asked my Twitter followers and received a slew of options. Ultimately, I landed on a player I never considered for this honor and was “voted” on by just one tweeter. Trea Turner was so good last season over just 324 plate appearances that he finished 12th in value among second basemen. He essentially matched Ben Zobrist’s value in only about half the plate appearances!

And while we throw the term sample size around all the time and stress the importance of concepts like regression, fantasy owners are closing their ears and yelling lalalalala, because they love their Trea and there’s nothing you could do about it. He’s being selected 10th overall on average in NFBC drafts and has even apparently gone first overall, while he also holds an ADP of 13.5 in Fantrax drafts. Are fantasy owners nuts or is this not a repeat case of Carlos Correa and overvaluing a small sample?

Plate Appearances: 657

My entire projection is based on the expectation that Turner hits second. However, in every Spring game he has started, Turner has hit leadoff. However #2, Dusty Baker apparently doesn’t want three lefties in a row after Turner, meaning that he has been hesitant to insert Adam Eaton into that slot behind Turner. That’s understandable, but rather than drop Eaton down, an easy fix would be to simply flip flop the two. That hasn’t happened yet, but I still feel like there’s a strong possibility that Baker comes to his senses. Or maybe I’m just giving him too much credit. If Turner does remain atop the order, figure an additional 15-20 plate appearances.

BB%: 6.9%

Turner was pretty close to the league average in all his plate discipline metrics, so it’s bizarre that he walked just 4.3% of the time during his debut. Aside from his time at Triple-A in 2015, he has generally been an above average walker, so even without improved plate patience, I think his walk rate should jump dramatically.

K%: 19.4%

Again, league average plate discipline should lead to around a league average strikeout rate. It didn’t, as he posted a mark a couple of ticks below that, but he has generally been in the 19% to 20% range during his time in the minors. I expect some minor regression here off last season.

GB%/LD%/FB%: 45.5% / 22.5% / 33%

Here, I’m simply regressing his near 25% career line drive rate down to a more sustainable number until he proves he’s one of the elites at hitting liners. Pitchers have limited control over line drives allowed, but that’s not the case for hitters. While they, too, bounce around, it’s generally the same group of guys atop the LD% leaderboards every year, which is an important driver of BABIP.

BABIP: .345

Turner was a magician last season, getting his balls to drop for hits all over the place, en route to a .388 BABIP. That mark would have tied DJ LeMahieu to lead the league if he qualified. Naturally, no one should expect a repeat. But did he post a legitimately high BABIP, even if the underlying skills supporting it aren’t necessarily sustainable? Let’s ask xBABIP — sure enough, he wasn’t that fortunate after all, as his xBABIP sat at a robust .364. That said, since I’m not expecting a near 25% line drive rate again and some regression over the rest of his batted ball profile and xBABIP components, I expect a decline to .345. Also remember that in the minors, with the exception of a short stint at Low-A in 2014, he never posted a BABIP below .369.

HR/FB Ratio: 10.0%

We knew Turner had gobs of speed, but power too?! Who does he think he is, Mike Trout? I don’t think even the most bullish of HR/FB rate projections would have pegged him for a 16.7% mark, which fueled a .225 ISO, way above his minor league career high of .169. Let’s find out what xHR/FB rate has to say — a respectable Brls/BBE of 7.5%, but an xHR/FB of 12.7%, a full four percentage points below his actual mark. You could go one of several ways here — project power growth and an increase in Brls/BBE that ensures his HR/FB rate doesn’t regress too significantly, forecast a HR/FB rate down to around his xHR/FB rate at 12.5%, or use it as merely one data point along with his entire minor league record to figure a more drastic drop. I went with the latter. Since I don’t have minor league HR/FB rates, I’ll go things old school:

The 2014 and 2015 lines account for all his stops, including his 40 at-bats with the Nationals. The “which one doesn’t belong game” is too easy. Sure, young players increase their power, but this was too extreme. My projection acknowledges his far inferior minor league power output, while still giving him credit for the spike he enjoyed with the Nationals.

Runs and RBI: 90 and 67

His runs scored number would jump, while his runs batted in total would decline, if I changed his expected batting order slot to first. He’d be a threat to score 100 runs in that scenario.

SB: 39

Turner also went bonkers stealing bases upon his call to the Majors. Below is a table illustrating the trend of a stat I developed and define in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, which is essentially stolen base attempts as a function of opportunities. The higher the number, the more frequently the player attempts a steal.

Once again, Turner’s performance with the Nationals last year is the big outlier. Here, I decided to nearly fully regress his SBA/TOB down to his previous minor league marks. With such a strong lineup behind him, there’s no need for him to run so often. Then again, he has always stolen bases at an excellent clip throughout his professional career, so who knows, maybe he suddenly felt all warm and fuzzy inside when stealing in the Big Show and wants to keep that feeling going.

Below is my final projected fantasy batting line, along with the other systems for comparison:

So after all that, we’re all quite similar, though with the Fans adorably bullish on his runs scored and stolen bases. But the biggest question is whether these forecasts justify a 10th or 13.5th overall pick. The answer is it sure does. My projection yields a value that ranks him eighth overall in a 12-team league with one catcher (settings assumed for the FanGraphs consensus rankings) and seventh overall in a 15-teamer (that’s where I had him valued in LABR Mixed).

It’s certainly understandable if your appetite for risk is such that you are totally unwilling to pay the price these projections infer. But the bottom line is that these numbers do indeed result in a top 10 player…if he hits the projections and doesn’t suffer the same fate Correa did.