Where is Justin Turner’s Power Hiding?

I was going to use the opportunity for my weekly content here to talk about Jake Lamb and his 481-foot home run, but I didn’t want to oversaturate the third base column with more Lamb material than I’ve already indulged myself in the past several months. Even if he is extremely noteworthy these days. Instead, let’s talk about one of his National League West counterparts: Justin Turner.

Justin Turner has been one of the most valuable offensive third basemen in baseball. Currently sitting at the top of the National League in Off rating, at 9.0, he’s batting .387 and reaching base at a .447 clip across 103 plate appearances. His park-adjusted offense sits at 168 as of Tuesday, best in the NL, and he’s striking out at a rate of only 9.7%, the second lowest total among qualifying Major League third basemen. However, as impressive as Turner has been in the season’s first month, there’s one element of his game that has been noticeably absent: the power.

Turner experienced an uptick on the power side last year, something that we weren’t entirely accustomed to seeing from the Dodger third sacker before 2016. He hit 27 home runs, which exceeded his previous career mark by 11, while posting an isolated power figure of .218, an increase of just over 20 points from the previous season (which also represented a career-best). With little basis for the power numbers prior to last season, it certainly stood to question if we’d continue to see Turner demonstrate that element of his game moving forward.

To date, we have not. He has just one homer through 103 PAs, with an ISO figure of .151. The latter mark there ranks 19th among the 25 qualifying third basemen. He’s still been very productive in a broad sense, but his power numbers pale in comparison to his peers at the third base position. But what’s to blame for that being the case?

Interestingly enough, there hasn’t been a significant change in Turner’s approach or contact trends that would seem to lend themselves to a decrease in power:

	Swing%	Contact%	SwStr%	Soft%	Hard%	LD%	GB%	FB%
2016	44.4	84.0	7.1	12.0	37.6	23.9	36.1	40.0
2017	46.5	87.7	5.7	7.2	34.9	30.1	28.9	41.0

He’s still making really quality contact, with that soft contact rate serving as the third lowest among the third base group. His approach hasn’t changed significantly, with a slight increase in that swing rate and a subsequent minuscule drop in his pitchers per plate appearance. The combination of Hard% and flyball rate last year was a factor in him being able to hit the ball over the wall as often as he did. Despite a similar FB% and impressive contact trends, that hasn’t been the case here.

A lot of it could come down to pitch location. It’s also probably worth noting that Brooks has Turner swinging at more offspeed stuff than he did last year, but other pitch types have experienced little to no change. So it may be a matter of how he approaches the zone, rather than how he attacks certain types of pitches. Where Turner was widely successful last year, in terms of generating power in the zone, was in that low-inside spot. His heatmaps lend themselves to favoritism in that area from Turner anyway, but his ISO on pitches inside, and especially low-and-inside, was extremely notable:

That’s an element that has experienced relatively significant change from last season to the first month of this one. That’s true of the overall swing percentage, as illustrated here, as well as the resulting power figures:

He’s still making quality contact in hacking at those pitches on the outer half of the zone and up, but it’s a clear change from what made him successful in the power game last year. He just hasn’t been able to generate the power from that area of the zone that he was in that low-inside spot that he relished so much last year. That idea certainly seems to lend itself to an explanation as to where Turner’s power has gone thus far.

It’s not as if we should balk at Justin Turner’s low power output as an overwhelmingly negative element of his game. It’s curious, but he’s still generating consistent offense because of his ability to make solid contact at a rate higher than most of his peers. The production is absolutely still there, and he’s absolutely still one of the more dangerous hitters in the game.

And it’s not as if an adjustment needs to be made here. Adjustments would indicate flaws, and there aren’t necessarily flaws present. He’s been a touch more aggressive, but has still been a well above average hitter, not only among third basemen but among Major League hitters in general. There’s still so much to like about his game, even without the power. Nonetheless, one does wonder if he could seek to make a slight adjustment in the approach and maybe hack at some of those low-inside pitches on which he feasted last season.