Steve Webb
Finally! After a whole winter of waiting and wondering, the Dodgers and third baseman Justin Turner have finally made it official. It was a bit like one of those protracted “Will they or Won’t they?” romances on a long-running TV sitcom. We all knew the two were meant to be together, and we just wanted them to kiss and get on with it. And on Saturday night, that longed-for embrace finally happened.
The announcement came in the short and sweet tweet from his personal account early Saturday evening. With the iconic shot of Turner circling the bases in that awesome walk-off against the Cubs a few seasons back, Turner tweeted simply “Lettts gooo run it back Dodgers fans!”
Shortly afterward, details of the deal started to emerge. According to ESPN’s baseball insider Jeff Passan, the deal is somewhere in the vicinity of two years for north of $30 million, and other reports are floating around suggesting that there might be an option for a third year tacked on to the deal. That is right about where the Dodgers wanted to be with this deal, and it is good to see that reports of the 36-year-old Turner demanding a four-year pact never materialized.
Justin Turner is more than the beating heart of this Dodgers ballclub; he’s still a damn fine third baseman. In the shortened 2020 campaign, after a slow start, the Long Beach native ended up with an impressive slash line: .307/.400/.460. And more importantly, he was as clutch as anybody on the team not named Corey or Mookie.
His good numbers continued into the postseason, and there was serious talk of Turner as a World Series MVP candidate before he tailed off a bit in the last couple of games. Still, his 1.066 OPS was a big part of the Dodgers’ offense during the series, and his two homers made him the all-time Dodgers leader in postseason dingers with 12.
So, while we still would like to have a little more confidence in the back end of the bullpen, the Dodgers have got to feel good about where they’re sitting going into the second half of February. Surely, there will be a lot of optimism in the air at Camelback Ranch this year.
And we can’t wait for the Dodgers first home game, whenever Gavin Newsom lets us in the stadium. There will be plenty of cheers for all the World Series champs to be sure, but I can wager one of the loudest will be for the guy who we all knew has always belonged in Dodger blue.
Welcome home, Justin!
