Welcome to The Advance Scout’s first week! After yesterday’s dive on one start made by one Josiah Gray, today I’m taking a similar approach and getting into the weeds on Justin Turner’s offensive mind. Stay tuned for a lot more to come.
Justin Turner plays hitter like the New England Patriots play defense. The Patriots, known for taking away an offense’s strength, will force you to show that you can succeed in a way that you haven’t before. That might involve double-teaming your best receiver or surrounding your mobile quarterback. Either way, the approach can tempt you into shifting your plan away from your own best player.
For Turner, it means narrowing his focus away from the temptation of a pitcher’s best pitch. Throw a plus-carry fastball that starts in the zone but jumps to the top of it? Turner will hone in on the bottom of the zone to catch your mistakes that only jump to the middle of it. Throw an insane slider that looks like a fastball at the bottom of the zone until it suddenly drops two feet? Turner will “zone you up” and set his sights in the upper-half.
Like the Patriots, Turner is usually persistent. Sure, he will adjust when he needs to - like when he gets into a 2-Strike count. But the strength of his approach is that he will force you to succeed multiple times with a pitch you aren’t comfortable with to get him out.
In appreciation of Turner’s new deal with the Red Sox, let’s celebrate three pitcher-specific examples of his plans in action. These examples were chosen to highlight a wide range of pitching approaches. We’ll start with a soft-tossing veteran lefty starter, then move to a right-handed reliever with an overpowering fastball, and then we’ll finish with Jacob deGrom.
Turner vs. José Quintana: May 9th, 2022
Pitcher’s plan: With stuff that can safely be described as “light,” Quintana overcomes lineups stacked full of right-handed hitters by making the plate look really big; he steals strikes on the outer third with perfectly-executed backdoor breaking balls, and he frustrates hitters with a change-up that looks like a hittable fastball on the lower-third of the zone for 55 feet.
But Quintana is only able to make the whole package work by backing right-handed hitters off the plate with a crowd-you fastball that probably looks like 97 mph if you’re leaning out over and looking for that soft curveball. As a hitter, you can get caught in between if you don’t come in with a plan.
Turner’s plan: The crowding four-seam fastballs are teasers. There’s not much a right-handed hitter can do with them if they’re executed up and in, so Turner will invite Quintana to try to pick up called strikes that pitch if he’s able to. Turner will instead be interested in the window that extends from the middle to the outer edge of the plate, which will include:
Fastballs attempts to get ‘in’ that miss
Curveballs that are ‘backdoor-ed’ over the outer-half
Changeups that are left up
This plan catches all of Quintana’s potential mistakes. Turner could fall behind and have to expand if Quintana hits his spots, but he wins leverage if Quintana misses even once.
Quintana At-Bat #1:
Quintana opts for an 0-0 changeup to open - a curious choice against a selective hitter like Turner. He misses wide to start Turner 1-0 before coming in with the crowding four-seam. Turner’s setup in the box makes pitch even harder on Quintana to execute. He crowds the plate, and his big leg kick is almost blocking the catcher’s target here.
It all gives the appearance of a very small window to land this pitch, which Quintana does not quite do:
Turner wasn’t interested in that one, but will Quintana try to repeat it? Apparently so. Here’s the target:
This one misses by even more than the first one does and it finds its way into Turner’s outer-half window. Turner jumps on it and gets a great pitch to hit.
Quintana At-Bat #2:
Quintana is not discouraged by that first sequence. He can’t abandon the crowd-you-heater because his full mix depends on it. He opens the next at-bat with two more of these. The first is probably a 50-50 strike call for the umpire, but (partly because Turner crowds the plate and is so obviously not interested in it) Turner wins the coin flip on this call:
Turner isn’t as lucky on the second one, which is well executed. Tip your cap to Quintana for getting it in there:
At this point, Quintana does what pitchers will sometimes do. Instead of coming back at Turner with the pitch that Turner doesn’t want to swing at, he changes approach for the sake of changing approach. He misses down with two consecutive changeups.
With the count now at 3-1, Quintana’s options are limited. Instead of giving in and throwing a fastball over the plate, he tries one more time to nail the inside edge:
Ball four, and a win for Turner.
Quintana At-Bat #3:
Turner hasn’t done damage against Quintana in the first two at-bats, but he’s easily won the battle of approaches. Quintana has saved one last wrinkle for their third encounter, as he attempts to drop in his first curveball of the night:
That one hung up there a bit and is moving right toward the middle of the plate. It’s very hittable, it has a pretty big velocity gap from the rest of Quintana’s mix and Turner isn’t sitting on it. Quintana comes back with yet another fastball in with his 0-1, but it misses high to push the count to 1-1.
Turner now has seen six Quintana fastballs, and all six have attempted to crowd him. Pitchers aren’t the only ones who change for the sake of changing. Just because Turner hasn’t been interested in the heater ‘in’ doesn’t mean he can’t be. Quintana might be thinking he has more room to work with, and with runners on 1st and 2nd here, the payoff on a free swing on a 90 mph fastball on the inner-third could be big:
An out, but another win for Turner. This pitch might’ve gotten just a touch in on him, but it was a good opportunity to unload.
After this start, Quintana and Turner went head-to-head again in September (after Quintana’s trade to St. Louis). In the second start, Quintana pitched backward and again had trouble landing the crowd-you four-seam fastball. In the final start, Quintana gave it up and broke out his two-seam fastball to work on outer-half of the plate.
Turner vs. David Bednar: May 11th, 2022
Pitcher’s plan: At 6’1”, 250 lbs., Bednar overpowers with a riding four-seam fastball. When the pitch rides along the top rail of the zone, it gets a lot of swing and miss. When all is well, Bednar pairs that high fastball with a big, 12-to-6 curveball that drops out of the same window. He’ll also mix in the occasional split-change to right-handed hitters.
Turner’s plan: Take away Bednar’s biggest strength - the fastball up. Anything that appears to be coming in above Turner’s belt will explode above his bat (and the zone, potentially), so Turner looks for the fastball that starts lower and is thus more hittable. The curveball is occasionally used to steal a first-pitch strike and would ‘pop’ out of that same high-fastball window, but Bednar had a tough time landing it consistently in 2022, so may as well let that one go.
Bednar, in apparent disregard for the many down/away fastball targets he receives, opens with a fastball in the upper-third. That’s the area Turner’s leaving alone, so he takes it for Strike 1:
Ahead 0-1, Bednar’s secondaries are more in play. The next pitch is a curveball that is an easy take for Turner, though.
Back even at 1-1, Bednar goes back to his biggest strength - that overpowering heater. If Turner weren’t “zoning down” (focusing on the lower half of the zone) here, this pitch would’ve looked pretty appealing out of Bednar’s hand:
Having taken that last fastball, Turner has (in a sense) already won the battle. With the count flipped 2-1 instead of 1-2 (the likely result had he chased that last pitch), Turner can keep zoning down and looking for the fastball that doesn’t clear the height of his belt:
Bingo. Even this pitch is a touch high for the swing Turner puts on it, but it is at least something a hitter can do damage on. Turner got what he wanted, even if he didn’t do quite what he wanted with it.
Turner vs. Jacob deGrom: August 31, 2022
Pitcher’s plan: deGrom’s attack against right-handed hitters was actually pretty straightforward in 2022. He’d mastered his command of his ridiculous 92-94 mph slider, so hitters saw a lot of those to pair with a dose of heat. deGrom’s fastball and sldier, located with pinpoint precision on the outer edge, made up roughly 85% of pitches all right-handed hitters saw last season.
When deGrom got ahead of a right-handed hitter, the mix between the two pitches was roughly 50/50 (plus the rare right-on-right changeup). But to get ahead, he primarily relies on his heater - throwing it in 68% of 0-0 counts to right-handed hitters.
Turner’s plan: While Turner is typically not overly aggressive to open, deGrom presents a pretty compelling case for not waiting around. The best chance to get a hittable fastball is the first pitch, so Turner will try to drive that pitch to right field. If he gets the occasional slider, so be it - deGrom has made hitters look silly before, and he surely will again. A hung deGrom slider at 94 mph also looks a lot like most fastballs, so Turner can really only lose if deGrom snaps off three good ones.
deGrom At-Bat #1:
Turner gets the “looking silly” part out of the way - deGrom switches things up and opens with a slider:
No chance at that one. That was a fastball swing on a slider.
On the second pitch, deGom comes back with a heater but pulls it just a little bit. If Turner is looking for something that starts middle-away like we think he is, this is an easy take:
With the count now at 1-1, the fastball away is more likely than it was before. deGrom saw Turner take a big hack at that 0-0 slider, though, so he comes back with that again:
This was a rare “flat” slider for deGrom, though - just the kind of thing Turner’s plan can work on. He drives it to the warning track in right field.
At-Bat #2:
deGrom pulls another fastball into the left-hand batter’s box to open. With Turner still locked into the outer-third, he’s able to stay on a 1-0 cement-mixer slider that doesn’t move a ton:
A base hit, and a win for Turner.
At-Bat #3:
In two at-bats, we’ve seen deGrom attempt to do everything he normally does, and we’ve seen Turner lean out over the plate in an attempt to drive a mistake fastball to the right side of the field or pull a mistake slider.
deGrom doesn’t really attempt to counteract this type of strategy by pitching inside to right-handers - not on purpose, at least. He might’ve been fortunate to let this fastball run in on Turner a little bit more than he might’ve wanted, though. Turner is a bit exposted in leaning out over the plate a little too much and gets beat by this pitch, which runs in on him:
Having beaten Turner with that last fastball, deGrom decides to go back to it. And on the seventh deGrom pitch Turner has seen on this day, he gets the first one that fits his deGrom approach perfectly - a 100 mph fastball on the outer edge:
A nice play and a touchdown spike from Brandon Nimmo, who robs us of a punch line. Turner put a charge into that pitch and sent it over the wall in center field, just like he planned.
Boston got a good one
Justin Turner is 38 years old. Based on his physical talent alone and its place on the aging curve, a $21.7 million guarantee that extends through his age-39 season seems a bit steep. For that money, you could sign a 32-year-old player who plays premium defense at a premium position (Keven Kiermaier) or a 29-year-old masher who can hit 495-foot home runs (Joey Gallo).
What’s even more remarkable about the Turner deal is that these other younger players only asked for a one-year guarantee to use as a platform for a bigger deal next offseason. Turner got two years guaranteed and got an opt-out after year one - so Boston is betting on him, and he’s betting on himself. He could turn in a 2023 season that lands him even more money on the open market.
To bet on yourself at age 38 and beyond is to bet that your experience and skill can overmatch physical decline. As a hitter, that physical decline can be ugly. Turner may not have control over the inevitable slowing of the “brain to muscles” sequence that will slow down his bat, but he does have control over his brain. And Turner’s hitting brain is special.
The pitches that Turner decides to take and to swing at are reflective of pitcher-specific plans that Turner bakes up before he steps in the box. He’s bringing those plans with him to Boston, and while hitting is an individual activity, those plans (and the thought that goes into creating them) will feed into to daily advance scouting meetings and benefit other Red Sox hitters. When you consider him as both a hitter and an offensive coordinator, that $21.7 million guarantee doesn’t seem so steep.