Historic nightmare: What a sh**t he sold the team” 12 fatal errors in a single match” Trea Turner has been declared a…
Even though Trea Turner has excelled at the plate in 2024, his 2023 fielding troubles have continued into his second season with the Philadelphia Phillies. In Friday night’s loss to the Cleveland Guardians, Turner’s defensive blunders came to light. Bryce Harper and Cristopher Sánchez also had poor defensive performances in a careless series opener.
Turner made one of the Phillies’ two mistakes during the defeat on Friday, but he also had a number of dubious plays. The three-time All-Star shortstop had five outs above average and nine defensive runs saved going into the game. Despite missing six weeks due to a left hamstring issue, he concluded the game with 12 errors for the season.
Naturally, Turner has been among the league’s best hitters this season while healthy. But it doesn’t count the game on Friday, when he went 0-for-4 and stranded runners on the bases by popping out to shortstop to close the seventh inning. Ben Lively, a former Phillie, is one of the greatest stories in baseball as of 2024. In six innings on Friday, he only gave up three hits and one run, striking out and walking two. With 99 1/3 innings pitched thus far this season, he has a 3.44 ERA, marking an unexpected breakthrough season for the 32-year-old.
And while the Phillies bullpen looked back on track Friday evening, the best bullpen in baseball shut their offense down in relief of Lively, with All-Star closer Emmanuel Clase shutting the door in the ninth.
It was an ugly way for Turner and the Phillies to lose Friday. They are still 64-39, but are a much more pedestrian 9-10 in July.
Highlights
- Bryce Harper and Trea Turner combined for three brutal plays in the field over the first two innings of the game. The first of which came when Cristopher Sánchez seemingly had Ángel Martínez picked off. However, instead of firing to Bryson Stott at second base, Harper tried to chase down Martínez. By the time he realized he wasn’t going to catch him, he flipped to Turner, who wasn’t really covering second base. Martínez was credited with a stolen base. Two batters later, David Fry plated Martínez with a single.
- The poor fielding continued in the top of the fourth inning. Andrés Giménez was nearly picked off at first base, but Sánchez made a high throw to Stott at second base and Giménez reached second. Giménez scored when Bo Naylor bunted to the left of the mound, and Sánchez threw home (unsuccessfully), rather than just taking the out at first base.
- Before the top of the fourth inning was out, Martínez brought Brayan Rocchio home with an RBI single to increase Cleveland’s lead to 3-0.
- Bryson Stott homered into the second deck off of Lively in the bottom of the fifth inning, a solo shot.
- As noted above, Turner popped up to strand a runner at third base to end the seventh inning
