Todays daily hitter will be on Justin Turner, the dude with the red haired flow from LA. Ya know, this guy.
Turner, as many of you probably know, is one of those guys that has bought into the “elevation revolution” and it has paid big dividends. He went from being a fringe everyday player to an All Star. Not bad. He is also a guy that knows his swing.
(quote from article on mlb.com, you can read it here)
Included in the quote above are two of the biggest adjustments Turner made that allowed him to transform himself as a player. First, he made it a priority to start catching the ball further out in front. Letting the ball “get deep” can work for some people. For others, it is a terrible idea. It all depends on the individual and how they interpret the cue. For Turner, it often made him late and caused him to miss barrel more than he should’ve. Catch it out in front made sense to him. The second part of the quote talks about his stride foot and what he has been trying to do there. Although he says in the article that he has always been a leg kick guy, he now tries to gain a little bit of ground on the leg kick. He is trying to create some momentum that he can transfer into the baseball. Again, this can be interpreted differently by different people. Some people with this advice would likely start jumping forward in an attempt to “gain ground”. No Bueno. Others, like Turner, have probably been stuck on their back side their whole lives so adding a little bit of forward momentum will make them better.
Here is a swing from Turners Instagram, @redturn2, that displays a lot of what he was talking about from the article:
We see Turner getting his foot up early and gaining ground:
And then we see him catching the ball out in front:
So not only was Turner aware of some things he needed to do to get better (catch it out in front and gain ground), but he then had the discipline to go to work on them in the cage and actually improve in those areas.
Not to be lost in this conversation was the caption from Turners Instagram video:
Justin Turner, an MLB All Star, is willing to challenge himself in practice via velocity on a machine. For those that know me, you know this makes me very happy. How are we supposed to be prepared for game-like pitching just by hitting off the tee and hitting BP?! Of course that is a rant for another time and another article.
I hope you enjoyed this piece on Turner today. Check back in for installment 9 tomorrow.