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Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
Yesterday, Sean wrote about players most likely to make the jump from really good to best-in-league caliber. He said that about halfway through the post he realized Trea Turner was in a league of his own.
Sean described Turner as “a speed-first guy, with surprising pop that really seemed to show up at the Big League level.” He posted a 3.3 WAR in 323 PAs last season, stealing 33 bases and batting .324 to go along with 13 homers as a second basemen, shortstop, and center fielder.
Essentially, he set the league on fire.
Even if you include his 40 AB cup of coffee in 2015, Turner’s 162 game pace has him hitting 23 homers and stealing 57 bases. He’s 23. Yes, he played only 73 games last year, but at an unreal pace of almost 9 WAR.
So…how valuable is Trea Turner, a shortstop/centerfielder who steals bases, hits homers, and gets on at a nearly .370 clip? Well, let’s take a look at Fangraphs mid-season Trade Value exercise to find out.
In that piece, Dave Cameron, who is great, ranks the top 50 MLB players in order of their possible trade value. Cameron considers value in light of contract terms and performance. The idea is that if you had the player ranked 25th you would gladly trade him straight up for anyone ranked 24th or better, but wouldn’t for anyone ranked 26th or lower. Turner didn’t make the cut for the original list because he’d barely played any major league games when it came out. Plus, he hadn’t set the league on fire just yet.
We’ve already established that Turner is really good and we know that he has 5 more seasons of team control, at least two more of them at pre-arbitration prices– baseball’s equivalent of minimum wage. It seemingly doesn’t get much better than that, so let’s take Cameron’s midseason piece to consider where Turner might land if the list were reissued today....
Read the rest of this post over at Off the Bench here.
