Will Justin Turner's Heroics Tuesday Night Save His Roster Spot Come Next Week?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

All season, Justin Turner has only pulled three non-ground balls. Two of them came in the same game, way back on April 2. The third came last night, when the Cubs could not have needed it any worse. Turner's two-rund double into Wrigley Field's deep left-field corner turned a 4-3 deficit into a 5-4 win, and was the payoff the Cubs have been waiting for from a player they signed to be much more than a mentor and a mascot. Until Tuesday night, that was all the quadragenarian had been.

Even now, Turner is only hitting .169/.292/.186. He's been used occasionally at third base, but he doesn't actually look viable there. As a mere right-handed complement to Michael Busch at first and a bat off the bench, or as the backup plan at DH when one of the outfielders goes down, Turner has been an abject failure so far. Hopefully, Tuesday night's huge hit signaled a turnaround. For the moment, though, he's already been surpassed on the depth chart.

When the Cubs signed Turner after missing out on Alex Bregman late in the offseason, they envisioned using him as the fill-in DH when scenarios just like the one they're experiencing now cropped up. Ian Happ has a balky oblique. He missed a few days (while still active) and then went on the injured list Tuesday, pushing Seiya Suzuki out to left field. Turner did start the first two of those contests as the DH, but on Monday night, Carson Kelly got that gig, while Miguel Amaya caught. Tuesday, with Happ leaving the active roster, the team called up prospect Moisés Ballesteros and inserted him into the lineup.

Ballesteros didn't blow any doors off in his debut, but he's ready for the majors, and he can really hit. He's barely half Turner's age. If he has a strong week-long audition (and if Happ returns early next week from his stint on the shelf, as he hopes), will it be Ballesteros or Turner who sticks around?

For the moment, the answer is probably Turner. Because Ballesteros is a lefty batter, he can't protect Busch from lefty hurlers. He's not even nominally capable of playing third, and if he's ever going to be a viable catcher in the majors, it'll be at some point a year or two from now. Turner's veteran presence exceeds that of Eric Hosmer, Trey Mancini, Tucker Barnhart and Yan Gomes, the other superannuated position players on whom the Cubs have had to cut bait early in recent seasons. They'll want to keep him around, for a while, to avoid spoiling the vibes of the clubhouse or lacking even a vaguely viable collection of warm bodies on the bench.

Even a month from now, however, that math could look quite different. Certainly, by the All-Star break, Turner has to be hitting much better than this. Otherwise, the team will need to replace him with someone who will. Ballesteros can't be the whole replacement for Turner, but he can be part of the solution. The clock is always ticking on a player Turner's age, in the modern game. Right now, it's ticking very loudly, indeed. Tuesday night was a thrilling moment, for the team and for the player. It might buy the player some time. The team, however, has to keep exploring options, unless and until Turner makes it easier to plug him in as a valuable bat on a semi-regular basis.

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[Victor Reichman]

The Cubs have several players at or below the Mendoza line and some have to go. Lopez, Brujan, Berti, Turner. None are even above average defensively. Either Brujan or Berti need to go. One could  be kept for their speed. Then decide between Lopez or Turner. I would rather have Matt Shaw and his low batting average to learn as he goes. He is at least as good a fielder as any of the above. Carrying 4 primarily infielders who can't hit a lick is ridiculous.