Trea Turner Ditches Dodger Dogs For Philly Cheese Steaks

The hot stove is in full swing! Yesterday, fantasy superstar Trea Turner agreed to an 11-year, $300 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. Finally, Philadelphians will learn whether Turner prefers Geno’s Steaks, or its competitor across the street, Pat’s King of Steaks. I took a weekend trip to Philly last year and tried neither, but did highly enjoy a version from Woodrow’s sandwich shop that was topped with truffle whiz. If you’re a fan of truffles (not the chocolates!), this is the pick. So now Turner joins his third team and a new home ballpark. Let’s consult the park factors to find out how his performance might be affected.

Let’s begin with the hit type factors. It’s almost a clean sweep for Citizens Bank, with Dodger Stadium barely beating out Citizens by being a bit less pitcher friendly for doubles. For singles, Citizens Bank was neutral, while Dodger suppressed them by 6% (remember these factors are halved to account for only games played at home. The better singles factor is a positive for Turner’s BABIP, though he didn’t how much of a split this year. At home, he posted a .344 mark, while away he was at .340. He’s made a career out of a well above league average BABIP mark, sporting a .344 career average. So it’s hard to believe his new park will boost that even higher, but perhaps it could help offset any age-related effects.

Citizens Bank is marginally worse for doubles, but both parks reduce them. Of course, Turner posted a much higher doubles rate at home this season, so he hasn’t been following any of the park factors! Just goes to show the effects of both a small sample size and the home field advantage. Triples factors are where we see a wide gap, with Citizens Bank sitting neutral, while Dodger is heavily suppressive. Finally, Turner was seemingly affected, as he hit just one triple at home, versus three on the road. But the numbers are so small, it’s impossible to say with any confidence that it was all park factor related.

Finally, we get to home runs. As the league HR/FB rate fell, so did Turner’s, which dropped to its lowest since 2018. Perhaps surprisingly, Dodger Stadium has been a nice home run park for right-handers, but Citizens Bank is even better. Turner actually posted a slightly higher HR/FB rate in away parks this season, so the move could help him get his mark back into the mid-teens.

We now move along to strikeout and walk factors. Citizens Bank actually inflates strikeouts, while Dodger was neutral, and therefore more favorable for hitters. Outside a small sample 2020 in which Turner posted the lowest strikeout rate of his career, his strikeout rate has remained remarkably stable, finishing between 17% and 19.9% since 2016. That’s quite consistent! He actually struck out a bit more often at home this season, and Citizens Bank could add a bunch more strikeouts as well.

Turning to walks, this hasn’t been Turner’s strong suit, as he owns just a 7.2% career mark, and has been well below that the past two seasons. There shouldn’t be much of an effect from the park switch, but as players age, they typically tend to walk more often. Getting on base more could keep his steals total high and offset some loss of speed.

Let’s now move to batted ball type distribution. There’s no such thing as a good GB or FB factor, so we skip over those. However, we know line drives are always good, and we find that Citizens Bank slightly suppresses them, while Dodger was neutral. Turner’s LD% has been around the league average the last couple of seasons, and was actually slightly better in away parks this year. The factor difference here isn’t big enough to make much of a projection change. There’s a bigger gap in the IFFB factor, though, with Citizens Bank inflating pop-ups by 12%. Turner doesn’t hit a whole lot of those though, so perhaps the park switch results in an extra pop-up or two, which over the course of the season, is pretty meaningless.

Overall, you might be surprised to learn that the two parks are very similar on their effects on offense. Both play rather neutral, despite high home run factors.

Moving to Citizens Bank looks like a slight positive for Turner’s BABIP, with the higher singles factors partially being offset by the worse LD and IFFB factors. However, his strikeout rate projection should increase, possibly offsetting the higher BABIP and resulting in a wash to his batting average. Also on the positive side, his home run forecast gets a bump. Obviously, a lot of Turner’s value is tied to his stolen bases. The good news is the Phillies stole the fifth highest number of bases in the league this season, and did so without a real speedster. Turner should absolutely continue to run in Philly. Unfortunately, his supporting cast gets worse, which will affects his counting stats by reducing his PAs. Furthermore, the Phillies will be without Bryce Harper for at least half the season, so that’s going to likely mean lower R/PA as well, in addition to the fewer PAs reducing his runs scored and RBI.

Without having run a before and after projection, I would guess moving to the Phillies slightly hurts Turner’s value, and it’s mostly because of the weaker offense behind him, meaning he’ll be hard pressed to score 100 runs again, or reach 708 PAs.