On December 2nd, 2013 the Mets made a decision that looms large on their current roster when they decided to non-tender Justin Turner.
At the time, Turner was coming off arguably his most productive season as he set a career high in WAR at 0.8 and OPS+ at 100 despite getting only 200 at-bats while playing seven different positions.
The move to cut a valuable utility infielder who was due to make less than $1 million through arbitration was a shock to fans, Mets beat writers, and even Turner as well who loved being with the team and had developed a special relationship with the fan base.
“That caught me off guard. It was something I wasn’t expecting. I’ll tell you what, that was probably the worst offseason I’ve had – not knowing where or if I was going to be playing the next year. That was hard.”
The reasoning behind a seemingly unreasonable move was that Turner’s propensity for not running balls out hard enough had irked the Mets front office.
But the move read more like a team not wanting to pay a backup infielder more than the league minimum.
Since leaving the Mets and signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Turner has shown the propensity to hit the long ball (17 homeruns in 458 at bats) and the ability to hit in big spots, batting .419 in 14′ and .364 this season with runners in scoring position, something the Mets have struggled with over that span.
Dodgers hitting coach Mark McGwire told reporters on Thursday that Turner has emerged as ” one of our MVPs last year, if not the MVP,” and that his infectious enthusiasm for the game makes everyone around him better.
“Thank you, New York Mets, for letting him go,” said McGwire after Turner’s game winning homer against the Cubs.
“It’s nice to be on a good team that’s motivated by winning from the top on down and is willing to do whatever it takes to get the pieces to win,” says Turner who declined to draw a comparison to the Mets. “That chapter’s closed.”
The numbers tell the real story.
Since 2014, Justin Turner is batting .331 with a .398 on-base and .522 slugging percentage, while belting 17 home runs and amassing a 7.2 WAR.
During that same span, Mets third basemen combined have produced a .257/.319/.362 slash with just a 2.9 WAR.
Turner has taken over as the Dodgers’ number three hitter, and has homered five times in his last ten games. Nobody is wondering anymore if his power and run production last season was a fluke.
