PHILADELPHIA — In stretching out Trea Turner’s $300 million contract over 11 years, the Phillies diluted the average annual salary for luxury-tax purposes and payroll flexibility. It’s the approach they took four years ago in signing Bryce Harper. The length of Turner’s deal, like Harper’s 13-year pact, was predicated on economics, not baseball.
But the Phillies also wagered that their new shortstop will have an unusually long stay at one of the sport’s most demanding positions.
“We’re betting on just elite athleticism and a desire to be really, really good for the entirety of his contract, the entirety of his career,” general manager Sam Fuld said recently. “We see him as a shortstop for a long, long time.”
Maybe the Phillies will be correct. Turner doesn’t turn 30 until June 30. His contract includes no-trade protection and doesn’t have any opt-outs, so he will be 40 when it expires. But he’s a dynamic athlete, one of the fastest players in baseball, and he hasn’t lost a step. His sprint speed last season (30.3 feet per second, as measured by Statcast) is nearly identical to his rookie year (30.2).
Since 2018, Turner has started 598 of a possible 708 games at shortstop — and another 49 at second base after getting traded to the Dodgers in 2021. If any player can defeat — or at least delay — Father Time, maybe it will be Turner.
Besides, the Phillies aren’t alone in their decade-long commitment to a shortstop. The Mets and Rangers signed Francisco Lindor and Corey Seager, respectively, to 10-year deals that take them through age 37. The Padres signed Xander Bogaerts for 11 years, through his 40th birthday. Carlos Correa had 13- and 12-year agreements with the Giants and Mets before both reneged over concerns about a 2014 broken leg that hasn’t hampered him since.
It’s almost as if shortstops don’t tend to age worse than catchers.
Never mind that Omar Vizquel and Derek Jeter are the only shortstops in the last 50 years to play at least 100 games at age 40. Such longevity is rare, no matter the position, and the track record for 40-year-olds isn’t great (see: Miguel Cabrera or Robinson Canó).
But the mid-30s seem to constitute old age for shortstops. Since 1972, 74 shortstops played in 100 or more games in their age-30 seasons, according to Baseball-Reference.com. The total plummets to 71, 48, 35, and 26 from ages 31 to 34. Only 17 reached the 100-game mark in their age-35 seasons; a total of eight did so at 36. By comparison, 25 catchers in the last 50 years played in 100 games in their age-35 season, 13 at age 36.
Actuarially, decade-long contracts for shortstops on the verge of 30 are risky business, even if they don’t come with Correa-level injury baggage.
“I’m shocked at those numbers,” said former Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa, who made at least 100 starts per season through age 38. “The conditions are much better now for shortstops to play much longer. I don’t understand why guys don’t play longer and more. That baffles me a little bit.”
Bowa noted the rule that now prevents vicious takeout slides at second base and the prevalence of infield shifts over the last decade that diminished the importance of range. He pointed to the manicured infields in modern ballparks compared with 1970s- and ’80s-era AstroTurf cookie-cutters such as Veterans Stadium that, in Bowa’s words, were so hard “it was like playing on the airport runway.”
Today’s players also have access to nutritionists and sleep experts to help keep their bodies in peak condition.
Yet Brandon Crawford (2022) and Jimmy Rollins (2014) are the only shortstops in the last 10 years to make 100 starts in their age-35 seasons. The only others to do so this century: Marco Scutaro (2011), Orlando Cabrera (2010), Jeter (2009), Miguel Tejada (2009), Royce Clayton (2005), and Vizquel (2002).
“There’s just not a lot of guys that have done it, or can do it,” said Phillies minor league infield coordinator Adam Everett, a slick-fielding shortstop for 11 seasons in the majors. “You do start to lose a step. It starts off where maybe it’s a quarter-step, or maybe it’s a half-step. But eventually you go, ‘Man, it’s tough for me to play this position,’ and it becomes evident real quick to people around you.”
Everett recounted a conversation with late Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter, who played with 13-time Gold Glove winner Ozzie Smith in St. Louis. Midway through his 19-year Hall of Fame career, Smith confided in Sutter that he was having more difficulty making throws from the hole between shortstop and third base.
“What happened was, he started cheating more to his left,” Everett said, noting that Smith had the superior range to still gobble up balls to his right even if he inched closer to second base. “But all the stats and analytics that we have, you can see when guys are actually starting to lose a step nowadays. It’s in the jumps they get and everything that goes along with playing shortstop.”
Bowa averaged 146 starts per season at shortstop for the Phillies through 1980 and started 100 of 107 games at age 35 in the strike-shortened 1981 season.
In 1982, the Phillies famously traded him (and then-prospect Ryne Sandberg) to the Cubs for younger shortstop Iván de Jesus. Bowa said he “heard those whispers” that he was getting too old to hold up as an everyday shortstop. But he made 138, 141, and 123 starts over the next three years from ages 36 to 38.
It wasn’t until 1985, when he turned 39, that his defense slipped and the Cubs released him.
“The Mets picked me up, and they wanted me to come back [in 1986] and be a utility player,” Bowa said. “Being realistic, I knew in my mind there were balls that were hit to me that I wasn’t getting to and I knew I should’ve caught. And I literally said, ‘No, I don’t want to come back.’ I could’ve played another year or two. I just knew in my mind it wasn’t the kind of play that was acceptable to me.”
The Phillies would be overjoyed if Turner is able to play shortstop until his late 30s. But they also aren’t crossing their fingers and wishing it into existence.
Before recommending last month to owner John Middleton that Turner merited the second-largest contract in franchise history, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski led what amounted to a risk assessment. He consulted his inner circle of scouts and executives and tasked the research-and-development department with gathering and analyzing data to help predict how Turner might age.
The odds are against Turner’s achieving Vizquelian longevity. But can he stay at shortstop for, say, six of 11 seasons? How many of a maximum 1,782 games through 2031 can he play at shortstop? 1,200? More?
“It’s not an exact science. There’s no crystal ball,” Dombrowski said. “You do as thorough a job as you possibly can. One thing I do think is that sometimes you have to differentiate between a normal big-league player and an elite athlete. An elite athlete can last longer at their performance level than, say, other individuals can.”
Bowa suggested that Turner and Lindor “have the perfect body” for the position. At 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds, Turner isn’t small. But he has a more classic shortstop build than Seager (6-4, 215) and Bogaerts (6-2, 218), who may wind up moving to third base in their mid-30s, a la Cal Ripken Jr. Correa (6-4, 220) got a revised six-year guarantee from the Twins based on the hedge that his leg will hold up through age 34 but maybe not 38 or 39.
It’s worth wondering whether the elimination of the shift will further limit shortstops’ staying power. Teams will continue to analyze how best to position their infielders. But with only two infielders on either side of second base, it won’t be as easy to hide an aging player’s range.
“You can get by with a longer-term contract with an outfielder. There’s not as much wear and tear,” Bowa said. “But guys in the middle of the diamond, man, you give them a long-term contract, you have to do some research and hope those guys are durable. And I think we’ve done a good job with Turner.
“It’s all up to the individual, how bad he wants to play every day. Just watching Trea Turner, watching Lindor, those guys expect their name to be in the lineup every day. And if they’re not, they’re upset about it. That’s half the battle.”
If necessary, Turner has the athleticism to switch positions. But most longtime shortstops don’t willingly move, and Turner indicated last month that he’s ready to overcome whatever challenges may await as he gets older.
“I put effort in, whether it’s the weight room or the training room. I take it seriously,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s going to look like. I don’t plan too far ahead. I’m going to compete for as long as I possibly can at the highest level I possibly can, and I’ll just bet on myself every step of the way.”
He isn’t the only one.
