Free Agent Poll: Justin Turner

I purloined an idea from Lone Star Ball. It isn’t the first time I’ve stolen from them. The idea is to go through some of the top free agents, use the contract FanGraphs suggests they will get and have a poll asking if we would like to sign him for that amount.

Justin Turner is #12 on Keith Law’s and # 10 on FanGraphs list of top free agents (both lists came out before all the players that had options decline this past week).

Craig Edwards figures he will get a 2-year, $26 million contract, $13 million a season.

Turner is 36 now, so he’s a bit older. We can expect his defense and offense to decline in the next few years. But then, over the past 5 seasons, he’s put up fWARs of 5.0, 5.4, 4.2, 3.4, and in this shortened season 1.3.

This year he hit 307/.400/.460 with 4 home runs. The year before, he had 27 home runs.

At this age, he’s declined some defensively, he’s slightly below average (but then our team seems to aspire to ‘slightly below average’ on defense.

He was terrific in the playoffs—something that always looks good when you are about to be a free agent.

There was that other thing at the end of the World series. I hate the MLB is putting it all on him. I’m am sorry MLB, but you guys are supposed to be the adults in the room. He wants to go back out on the field. You stop him. And, why did you let him continue to play after an inconclusive test? Don’t you keep saying you are using an ‘abundance of caution’?

But yes, obviously, Turner didn’t take Covid seriously. I get wanting to be on the field, and I could almost forgive if he had kept a mask on, kept a little distance from people. But he didn’t. Beyond that, there are pictures of him kissing his wife. Now, I’m married and all, but when one of us has a cold, we tend not to kiss. Even if you had the idiotic notion that this is ‘just the flu’, do you want to give the flu to your wife?

I’m guessing MLB gives him a bit of a suspension, likely negotiated, so that he doesn’t fight it, and we don’t hear too much about how MLB just let all this happen, but something to underline that he is the scapegoat for what happened and that it ‘wasn’t MLB’s fault at all’ ™.

Anyway, let’s do the poll.