Philadelphia sports fans have long been portrayed as some of the worst fans in sports. It’s no secret they are hated by other fanbases across all major North American sports. They are called mean, trashy, scumbags and any other name in the book that you can think of. They are told they are terrible to their players due to their tendency to boo and jeer when a player isn’t performing relative to their expectations. While some of this is true for a small portion of the fanbase, every city has their fair share of “bad” fans.
However, back in the series against the lowly Kansas City Royals, Phillies fans showed the sports world why the city of Philadelphia has some of the best fans in sports. It is no secret to any baseball fan that Trea Turner is having a bad season. After signing an 11 year $300 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies this offseason Turner has not even come close to living up to expectations and is currently in the midst of his worst season of his career.
At the start of the Royals series he posted a slash line of .235.290/.368, good for a .657 OPS and an OPS+ well below a 100 (which is league average). He had the highest strikeout rate of his career, excluding the 2015 season where he played in just 27 games. His defense had been average at best with -3 DRS (according to Baseball Reference) and 1 OAA (according to Baseball Savant). These metrics feel very generous, as the eye test tells a much worse story for Turner at shortstop.
Thanks to many players in the lineup stepping up and having very productive seasons, particularly Bryson Stott, Alec Bohm, Nick Castellanos, Brandon Marsh just to name a few, Trea Turner has been the face of the Phillies struggles and has received the brunt of the fanbase’s frustration. He has been booed relentlessly by the fanbase all season long due to these struggles. Turner understands, and has openly said, he needs to be better. After the Phillies extra-innings loss to the Marlins on August 2nd, Turner said in a post-game interview, “Obviously I’m the reason we lost that game,” after his misplay in the field allowed the Marlins to tie the game in the 11th. The Phillies would go on to lose the game in the 12th inning off a Jesus Sanchez single.
Looking at highlights from Trea Turner in 2023 and comparing them to 2021 and 2022, arguably the two best seasons of his career, there appears to be minimal change in his swing and mechanics at the plate. This points to the majority of his struggles being mental instead of physical. Phillies fans seemed to recognize this. Heading into the aforementioned series against the Royals, there was a widespread movement among Phillies’ fans to give Trea Turner a standing ovation in his at-bats throughout the game.
This was done in an effort to show Turner that while the fanbase was obviously unhappy and unsatisfied with his performance on the season, they still had his back and would stand behind their franchise shortstop. In his first at-bat of the night, the fans delivered. A crowd of 36,000 strong roared as he walked up to the plate in the bottom of the 2nd. In a 1-1 count Turner lined out. The fans continued this throughout all his at-bats and then in the bottom of the 6th Turner lined an RBI single to right-center breaking an 0-17 slump.
After the game Turner said to reporters, “That was pretty f*****g cool…The fans have my back … they’re showing up for me and it’s pretty cool to see. That was pretty nice and wish we could have come out with that win right there. But I thought that was awesome, (Quote from Phillies Nation article). It was nice to see Turner seem to get a boost of confidence and in a better state of mind after the first round of ovations and his RBI single. Little did fans know, he was about to do a lot more over the next stretch of games.
Trea Turner came out the next day, once again greeted by ovations from the Philly faithful. He crushed a 3-run go ahead homer to left to put the Phillies on top 8-6 in the 6th inning. For good measure he added an insurance run on an RBI double in the 8th to give the Phillies a 9-6 lead. Kimbrel shut the door in the ninth to secure the win as the Phillies bounced back from the tough loss the night before. Turner played a massive part finishing the day 2-4 with 4 RBIs. He finally had his breakthrough and continued to hit very well from that day forward. Following the ovations Turner slashed, .436/.463/.744 with a 1.207 OPS.
He had 6 doubles and 2 homers with 10 RBIs in his 10 game hit streak following the August 4th contest with the Royals. He walked twice while only striking out 6 times in these 10 games. He looks more confident and poised at the plate, and isn’t just swinging and missing at almost everything coming his way. He looks more and more like the player the Phillies expected to get when they gave him that massive contract.
After the ovations, Bryson Stott said it best. “In the media and all that, all you hear is how this place is terrible, you don’t want to play here, they don’t like their players and blah, blah, blah… I was like, ‘There. This is Philadelphia. And this is why we love playing here,” (Quote from MLB.com). While every Phillies fan wishes he could’ve played like this all season, this is a massive step in the right direction and it all started with the best fans in baseball having their guy’s back and showing the sports world why they aren’t nearly as bad as everybody seems to think they are.
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