PHILADELPHIA — Trea Turner didn’t mince words Monday night.
He hit two home runs plus a double, drove in five runs and scored twice in a 10-7 Phillies win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. He also committed his MLB-leading 15th error and could’ve been tagged with three more in a defensive adventure at shortstop.
“Just a ridiculous game, in general, by me,” Turner summed up. “Which I’m just happy we got the win.”
Things have been eventful lately for Turner, who is both coming alive with the bat and coming undone with the glove. He’s been stinging the ball since the All-Star break, adding 30 points to a batting average that cratered into the .210s in mid-June. But his continued defensive lapses seem to be accelerating the timeline on which the Phillies can no longer afford to keep the 33-year-old at such a premium defensive position.
At the plate, Turner is in a great spot. In the first four games of the second half of the season, he’s 8-for-18 with two doubles and four homers.
Monday night, He ambushed Emmet Sheehan’s first delivery of the night for a double up the left-center gap at 110.1 miles per hour off the bat. He clubbed a no-doubter 404 feet out to left in the second inning on a fat, hanging slider for a two-run homer. In the sixth, he hooked an Alex Vesia changeup 346 feet just inside the foul pole for a three-run dinger.
The double was the 300th of Turner’s career. The homer was his 200th, a milestone that resonates with the slightly built shortstop.
“I think it’s pretty cool,” he said. “I don’t think early in my career anybody thought I would hit 200 homers, so I think it’s kind of cool from an evolution standpoint of where I was when I was younger and what kind of hitter I was to being able to do that at the highest level.”
It’s part of what Turner hopes is a second-half recovery. He struggled early to build on last year’s batting title, though not to the degree that he struggled in his first season as a Phillie in 2023. Power is a pathway back, and loud hits for a player occasionally regarded as a contact hitter is a sign he’s on the right track.
When Turner was scuffling at the plate, interim manager Don Mattingly stood by the guy on the 11-year, $300 million contract. He’s taking the same tack with the current defensive issues.
Turner had a nightmare in the field. He booted a grounder in the first inning that loaded the bases and added pitches onto the ledger of starter Cristopher Sanchez, who went just 5.1 innings. In the fourth, he failed to flag down a tough Alex Call grounder up the middle, perhaps the most defensible of the three miscues scored as hits.
He charged and booted an Andy Pages ball in front of second base in the sixth with the bases loaded and two outs, allowing a run to score and make the game 4-3, though Orion Kerkering got Tommy Edman to end the threat. In the ninth, Turner took a tough hop from Edman off the knee, literally kicking it into the outfield for a base hit.
“Couldn’t tell you,” Turner said of the defensive issues. “But it happens. Keep working, and we’ll get through it.”
The error was Turner’s 15th of the season, tying him with three others for the most in the majors. (For what it’s worth, the others – CJ Abrams, Junior Caminero and Otto Lopez – were All-Stars.) At minus-7 outs above average, Turner was tied for 13th worst in baseball entering the night. It comes on the heels of a 2025 season that seemed like a defensive turnaround, where Turner ranked 10th in baseball at plus-17 OAA. That was a huge jump from minus-2 in 2024.
Mattingly remains staunchly in Turner’s corner. He refuted the idea that a day as the designated hitter would do any good. A positional change has not been publicly broached, Turner having played second base as a Dodger in 2021 but exclusively at shortstop in his final season there and his four as a Phillie. Turner played a bit of center field with Washington in 2016 (and a corner spot could be his ultimate destination at some point in his seven remaining contract years, though that’s not on the table yet.)
“Trea’s our guy,” Mattingly said. “Trea works every day, so it’s not like Trea’s out there and doesn’t care about defense. Trea cares about his defense. He wants to make plays. He’s working every day, so we ride with Trea.”
Both stressed the daily work with Bobby Dickerson, the Phillies infield instructor. It’s often hours before first pitch, and it’s a consistent part of Turner’s routine. Turner is at an obvious and admitted ebb in confidence, and his goal is to rebuild it.
“I feel like it’s hard to have confidence sometimes, and it’s the same thing in the field,” he said. “You’ve got to go out there and make some plays and build that confidence.”
Mattingly’s stance is unequivocal.
“I trust Trea,” he said. “Honestly, I trust all our guys. Trea’s going to make some great plays. There’s going to be errors with everybody. So again, Trea works. He’s out there every day working on ground balls. He’s working on his hands, all that type of stuff. So as long as Trea works, we ride with Trea.”
Turner’s road to confidence entails a little self-deprecation. Beyond the Bronx cheers from the crowd on a couple of inning-ending – and routine, it should be noted – plays, he got a little schtick from teammates. He’s the first to say he deserves it, and he uses it in his process of shaking off a rough night.
“Just a roller coaster, up, down, up, down,” he said. “But when you do things like that or have games like that, sometimes you’ve just got to laugh about it, and they gave me a hard time.”