Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Trea Turner was placed on the 10-day injured list Saturday with a left hamstring strain, but he’ll likely be out much longer than that.
Turner told reporters in Philadelphia that he expects to be out for about six weeks.
When asked how long he expects he’ll be out, Trea Turner said six weeks. https://t.co/CPArUeWL9N
If that projected timeline holds up, Turner would miss around 30 games and be able to return sometime around June 15.
Turner picked up the injury in the fourth inning of the Phillies’ 4–3 win over the San Francisco Giants on Friday night. After a pitch glanced off Giants catcher Tom Murphy’s glove, Turner showed off his incredible speed by scoring from second base on a passed ball. But he told reporters that he felt something in his left hamstring a few steps before crossing home plate.
Turner was replaced at shortstop by Edmundo Sosa in the top of the fifth.
It will be tough sledding for the Phillies (22–11) without Turner in the lineup. The 30-year-old is batting .343/.392/.460 with 10 doubles and 10 stolen bases in 33 games this season.
To take Turner’s place on the 26-man roster, the Phillies recalled infielder Kody Clemens from the Triple A Lehigh Valley IronPigs.
As Willie Mays turns 93 years old Monday, the position he redefined with his combination of speed, power and elan has lost its glamor. Center field is the worst position on the field this season and populated with one of the worst collections of hitters the position has ever seen.
Center fielders entered play Monday hitting .224 with a .292 on-base percentage and .648 OPS, all of which would easily be the worst rates at the position. With the way modern hitters sacrifice batting average for power, you might excuse the ineptness if there was some serious slugging. Nope. Center fielders this season are slugging .357, well below the nadir of .370 in 1989 since the mound was lowered in ’69.
How bad is the center field crisis? This bad:
Nine teams are hitting less than .200 out of center field.
The .648 OPS from center field is the worst of any position, 19 points lower than the next worst, second base. Center fielders also have the worst batting average, worst OBP, worst slugging, fewest hits and fewest total bases among all positions.
Seven teams have one or no home runs by their center fielders.
It’s not just a bad month. Since the mound was lowered in 1969, the seven worst batting averages for center fielders all have occurred in the past seven seasons (2018 to ’24).
Even the arms are worse in center field. Average arm strength has dropped from 90 mph in 2022 to 89.4 in ’23 to 89.2 this year.
What in the names of John Fogerty and Terry Cashman is going on here?
Mike Trout, Byron Buxton, Clay Bellinger and Luis Robert Jr. are hurt.
Aaron Judge, Julio Rodríguez, Corbin Carroll, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Cedric Mullins are having slow starts.
Judge, who has had an uncharacteristically slow start this season, was given his first career ejection against the Tigers on Saturday.
Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
A bevy of young center fielders are having a hard time hitting their weight, or at least .230, such as Tyler Freeman, Parker Meadows, James Outman, Ceddanne Rafaela, Kyle Isbel, Dominic Fletcher, Jose Siri, Johan Rojas, Michael Siani, Victor Scott II, Stuart Fairchild and Will Benson.
What is so strange is that the amazing athleticism and offensive profile we see from a new generation of shortstops—Elly De La Cruz, Bobby Witt Jr., Gunnar Henderson and CJ Abrams—isn’t showing up in center field.
It was Mays, who debuted with the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons and in the National League with the ’51 New York Giants, who popularized center field as a glamor position of power and speed. His two home parks, Rickwood Field and the Polo Grounds, had enormous outfields that allowed him to showcase his range.
Mays changed the game. In 1955 he became the first player to hit 50 homers while stealing 20 bases. He led the league in stolen bases each of the next four seasons, pulling the game away from its station-to-station conservatism. Until Mays, baseball had seen only one 30–30 player, Ken Williams of the St. Louis Browns back in ’22. Then Mays did it in back-to-back years, ’56 and ’57.
Mays hit .300 with 30 home runs eight times, a record for center fielders, followed by Mickey Mantle (7), Ken Griffey Jr. (5), Duke Snider (4) and Trout (3). Only three center fielders in the past six years have done it even once: Judge (2022), Ketel Marte (’19) and Trout (’18).
Comparing anybody to Mays is folly. As the journalist Murray Kempton wrote, Mays was as original as Faulkner or the Delta Blues. The actress Tallulah Bankhead, a fellow Alabaman, supposedly said the world had two true geniuses: Shakespeare and Mays.
There will likely never be a center fielder quite like Mays, who hit .300 with 30 home runs eight times.
Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated
Leo Durocher, Mays’ first manager with the Giants, once wrote that “If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases and performed a miracle in the field every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better.”
Durocher said Mays was the ultimate five-tool superstar.
“And,” he added, “he had the other magic ingredient that turns a superstar into a super-superstar: charisma.”
Mays remains the pinnacle of what a center fielder should be. There is no one like him before or since. Forget finding a center fielder who hits .300 with 30 home runs these days. Can we at least get a center fielder who hits .280 with 20 home runs? Sadly, the answer last year was no (for the first time in 47 years) and it might be too much to ask again this year.
New York Yankees outfielder Juan Soto unleashed a mammoth home run during Tuesday's loss against the Baltimore Orioles, and he boldly opted to stare down pitcher Dean Kremer as he began to trot the bases.
When asked after the game about the staredown with the Orioles' starter, Soto told reporters that he chose to glare at Kremer because the right-hander didn't like his "Soto Shuffle."
Soto's sixth-inning solo launched a stunning 447 feet into the seats in left field, and he was clearly fired up about the moonshot despite the Yankees still trailing 4–2, a scoreline that would hold out for the remainder of the game.
If Kremer wasn't a fan of Soto's antics in the batter's box, he's certainly not alone, though the left-handed slugger doesn't seem likely to put an end to his shuffling maneuvers.
The 447-foot bomb was Soto's eighth of the year, and he's up to 25 RBIs on the campaign through his first 31 games.
