THE GOOD PHIGHT’S PLAYER OF THE WEEK: 4/15-21

If you missed the first installment of The Good Phight’s Player of the Week, go look.

Otherwise, the concept is pretty simple. We are highlighting some of the best players throughout the week of Phillies baseball.

In the second Player of the Week award of 2024, we pick Alec Bohm’s left-side partner over at shortstop, Trea Turner.

Weeks stats: .461/.481/.731, 1 HR, 4 RBI, much better defense at shortstop.

Like many of the Phillies hitters this season, Trea Turner didn’t get off to the hottest of starts. Through April 13, Turner sat with an OPS of just .671 with a .381 BABIP. He didn’t exactly look like the difference-making player the Phillies paid for in the 2022-23 off-season.

Turner started to elevate the baseball this week into more doubles after smacking everything into the ground to start the year. It was against pitchers on the Rockies and White Sox but still good signs nonetheless.

This could be one of Turner’s best seasons as his swing decisions look more like his 2021 version. He’s cut down his chase rate by nearly nine percent while maintaining the same zone swing percentage. It’s led to over a nine percent decrease in whiff rate as well.

Other Candidates:

Aaron Nola: 15.1 innings, 3 ER, 16 strikeouts, 2 walks, 8 hits, 2 home runs

Nola gets a slight bump because he got to make two starts this week while the other four guys only made one but he put together two encouraging starts that should go a long way.

His curveball is starting to get the same bite that it had over the last few seasons with 16 whiffs over the last week. His fastball is also sitting closer to the typical 90-93 mph we are used to from him.

Ranger Suárez 9.0 innings, 0 ER, 8 strikeouts, 1 walk, 7 hits vs Colorado

Suárez is really coming into his own in his third full season as a starting pitcher. He fixed his changeup command to give himself another pitch to work against right-handed hitters.

He’s walking a lot fewer batters this year than before and generating one of the highest groundball rates in the game.

Part of me wishes he didn’t throw 112 pitches in an April start but he also deserved the chance to throw the second complete game of his career.

Spencer Turnbull: 7 innings, 0 ER, 6 strikeouts, 2 walks, 1 hit vs CWS

Turnbull has been one of the great stories to begin this season as he has given the Phillies the best two-million-dollar value they could’ve asked for.

He took a no-hitter into the seventh inning and keeps showing off a nasty set of of-speed and breaking pitches they’ve let him play with.

He’s going to go back into the bullpen for Taijuan Walker which stinks but you cannot ask for a better string of outings from a spot starter.

2024-04-22T13:39:39Z dg43tfdfdgfd