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Like a Red-Headed Step-Child

Frayed Knot Aug 30 2013 10:02 AM

Lost in yesterday's walkover against Philly was a startling piece of news ... JUSTIN TURNER SCORED A RUN!!!! He walked two batters in front of Recker's HR and was able to trot home for his 5th run scored of the year!! That's right, FIVE (and only three since mid-April), a number that seems almost impossible. And while the initial reaction from some is going to be: 'well sure, he sucks and don't play that often', he doesn't suck that much, has more than 1/4 of his hits go for XBs, has hit in every slot in the lineup except 3rd, has only once been thrown out on the basepaths (trying to stretch a single which, IIRC, was a bad call), never been caught stealing and doesn't get PR'd for. Tale of the Tape: 71 games; 29 Starts vs 42 as sub. 171 PAs, 157 ABs; .261/.312/.338 41 Hits including 10 2Bs + 1 3B; also 11 walks, 1 HBP, and reached once on an error - He's scored just one more run than Jon Niese, and fewer than Colin Cowgill (7), Rick Ankiel (7) (admit it, half of you forgot those two were even Mets this year) and Wilmer Flores (6) despite more than twice as many ABs as each. - He's scored a lot fewer than Recker (14), Valdespin (16) and Brown (12) despite more ABs than any of them. And while it's easy to cite JT's zero HRs as the reason, he's also significantly behind the likes of Baxter (13 runs, 0 HRs, fewer ABs), Satin (20, 2, fewer) and even Tejada who has of course no HRs and a .209/.267/.262 line with only 30 more ABs yet has scored 18 times. Once you take away the five times he's actually managed to round the bases safely, I found that he was erased on a force play 3 times and erased himself once (the stretched single) leaving him to be stranded the other 44 of the 53 times he got on including 27 of those 44 in scoring position (20 at 2nd, 7 at 3rd). I then wondered if he was somehow managing to get on when there were already two outs but, no, he's been on 15 of those times with no outs, 20 more with one, and is even hitting .300/.344/.433 when leading off an inning . Four different times he's reached base three times in a game (with a total of two runs to show for it) and once he got on four times (and was stranded after all four). My only conclusion to reach from all this is freaky bad luck. With near identical ABs and slash stats last year (slightly more power) he at least managed 19 runs scored which seems to put him more in line with others of his use and production. I had a similar year like this once on a softball team. I hit leadoff, was one of the fastest guys on the team, hit decently if not anything noteworthy. But I wound up scoring just a few runs during the whole season because on days when I hit the guys behind me didn't and vice-versa.

seawolf17 Aug 30 2013 10:07 AM Re: Like a Red-Headed Step-Child

I think luck is a big piece of it. (And the fact that the Mets, as a team, are terrible at baseball.) If you look at the bottom of the runs scored leaderboard: http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/ ... e/minpa/75 His batting line stands out a little bit among the non-scorers. Only Chris Coghlan has a higher BA, and nobody has a higher WAR.

Frayed Knot Aug 30 2013 10:15 AM Re: Like a Red-Headed Step-Child

seawolf17 wrote: Only Chris Coghlan has a higher BA, and nobody has a higher WAR. And the number of hits from the rest of the 5-runs crowd range from 1/3 to barely over half of Turner's 41. I think GK&R should make a big deal about every time he gets on for the rest of the year just to see how each episode will end.

Ceetar Aug 30 2013 10:37 AM Re: Like a Red-Headed Step-Child

Frayed Knot wrote: seawolf17 wrote: Only Chris Coghlan has a higher BA, and nobody has a higher WAR. And the number of hits from the rest of the 5-runs crowd range from 1/3 to barely over half of Turner's 41. I think GK&R should make a big deal about every time he gets on for the rest of the year just to see how each episode will end. tweet at Kevin and/or Ron. Maybe you can get 'em to bring it up.

dinosaur jesus Aug 30 2013 10:48 AM Re: Like a Red-Headed Step-Child

It's a total fluke. Even on a bad-hitting team, he should have more like fifteen runs. He's scored less than once every ten times he's been on base, but over his career he's scored once every three or four times, not counting home runs. That's a pretty typical ratio--in fact, it's where the Mets as a team are this year.

Frayed Knot Aug 30 2013 11:16 AM Re: Like a Red-Headed Step-Child

Ceetar wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: I think GK&R should make a big deal about every time he gets on for the rest of the year just to see how each episode will end. tweet at Kevin and/or Ron. Maybe you can get 'em to bring it up. I would, but that would involve me tweeting ... which would involve me first learning how to tweet ... which would, ah it would just be too much fucking trouble. Feel free to do so yourself and claim it all as your idea. Gary's aware of it, he brought it up at least twice in the last few days. I just figured that tracking it more closely each and every time Turner gets on would give them something to do and might even inject a wee bit of drama into the next month of increasingly meaningless games.