{"id":11212,"date":"2015-08-26T23:47:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T03:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11212"},"modified":"2015-08-26T23:50:56","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T03:50:56","slug":"why-exactly-did-the-nats-call-up-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11212","title":{"rendered":"Why exactly did the Nats call up Turner??"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_11214\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/turnerTrea-via-wp.com_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11214\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11214\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/turnerTrea-via-wp.com_-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Turner in a Nats uniform... why?? photo via wp.com\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/turnerTrea-via-wp.com_-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/turnerTrea-via-wp.com_-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/turnerTrea-via-wp.com_.jpg 1484w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11214\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turner in a Nats uniform&#8230; why?? photo via wp.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In some of the previous posts&#8217; comments sections, I opined that I thought it would be &#8220;GM malpractice&#8221; to call up uber SS prospect <strong>Trea Turner<\/strong> at any point prior to mid April of next year.\u00a0 My general reasoning including any and all of the following points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the team finally had <strong>Ian Desmond<\/strong> hitting decently enough (consistently between about .250-.280 in 1\/2\/4 week samples going back a month).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Danny Espinosa<\/strong> has been a revelation this year, increasing his slash lines across the board and as we speak posting a 99 OPS+ figure.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Yunel Escobar<\/strong> being the 2nd most valuable hitter on the team, in addition to wordlessly changing positions as the Nats need dictates.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Anthony Rendon<\/strong> finally back on the big club, even if he&#8217;s a shell of what he was last year, is still an excellent top-of-the-order MLB hitter.<\/li>\n<li>Given the wealth of middle infielders already on the roster (not even mentioning <strong>Wilmer Difo<\/strong> or <strong>Emmanuel Burriss<\/strong> both of whom have been used already this year in a backup capacity), why call him up to be a backup?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, given that all four of these middle infield options are (finally) together, healthy and performing relatively decently, what possible rationale would there be to <a href=\"http:\/\/gradingonthecurve.com\/2015\/08\/22\/washington-nationals-pinning-playoff-hopes-to-trea-turner\/\">call up Turner<\/a>??<\/p>\n<p>Why would this team *possibly* want to prematurely start the service time clock on such a polished prospect, unless there was a REAL and ACTUAL need to call him up?\u00a0 By &#8220;real&#8221; and &#8220;actual&#8221; I mean that suddenly the team found itself without an able bodied short stop and found itself in a position where Turner would play full time.<\/p>\n<p>No, that&#8217;s not what has happened.\u00a0 Turner was called up on 8\/21\/15.\u00a0 In the five games since, he has two garbage time PAs in a 10-3 loss on his debut and two pinch hit ABs.\u00a0 He&#8217;s played less than 3 whole innings in the field.\u00a0 What the hell is this team doing??<\/p>\n<p>Matt Williams isn&#8217;t going to sit Desmond in favor of Turner.\u00a0 No way; we&#8217;ve seen *time and again* that Williams cow-tows to veterans, ensures that they hit in their preferred lineup spots and play their preferred positions even when evidence shows they&#8217;re in need of change.\u00a0 And even if Williams wanted to sit Desmond &#8230; he&#8217;s clearly going to play Espinosa in his place, another established vet with a track record and a good 2015 going.\u00a0 Where exactly is Turner going to play??<\/p>\n<p>I agree whole heartedly with <strong>Jim Bowden<\/strong>&#8216;s take: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/dc-sports-bog\/wp\/2015\/08\/24\/jim-bowden-wonders-why-the-nats-called-up-trea-turner-to-sit-on-the-bench\/\">why did the Nats call him up to sit on the bench<\/a>??\u00a0 Something is fishy here.\u00a0 And we&#8217;ve harmed the long term benefit of the club in the process.\u00a0 Instead of waiting til next April to call him up, we&#8217;ve needlessly thrown away a year of his career in his prime by starting his service time clock way too soon, and for no reason.\u00a0 He&#8217;s not going to be impactful coming off the bench, he&#8217;s not going to play in place of the established regulars Desmond, Escobar and Rendon.\u00a0 He&#8217;s certainly not going to supplant Espinosa as the #1 middle infield option off the bench in case someone gets hurt.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t need a &#8220;designated runner&#8221; until we&#8217;re, you know, actually in the post-season (a concept that seems to be draining by the day thanks to middling losses to 2nd-division teams over and over).<\/p>\n<p>I think this is a clear sign (as Bowden alludes to) that the <strong>Mike Rizzo<\/strong>&#8211;<strong>Matt Williams<\/strong> working relationship is shot and that this team is quickly heading down the drain of under performance.\u00a0 But as a long-term fan who thinks Turner&#8217;s value to this team is in the next incarnation of the squad, it really infuriates me to see him being wasted on the MLB bench for no reason, costing the team an extra year of his service when he hits his prime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In some of the previous posts&#8217; comments sections, I opined that I thought it would be &#8220;GM malpractice&#8221; to call up uber SS prospect Trea Turner at any point prior to mid April of next year.\u00a0 My general reasoning including any and all of the following points: the team finally had Ian Desmond hitting decently [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[185,135,2165,114,507,1314,129,2426,1569],"class_list":["post-11212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-emmanuel-burriss","tag-ian-desmond","tag-jim-bowden","tag-matt-williams","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-trea-turner","tag-yunel-escobar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11212"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11218,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions\/11218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}