Justin Turner’s Big In-Game Adjustment

Justin Turner refused to be fooled a third time by Dallas Keuchel in Game 1 of the World Series. He made an equipment change after a strikeout and a pop out, and was ready for the pitcher’s final attempt to go to the well. That go-ahead two-run home run in the sixth serves to give us all a look inside the type of adjustments hitters have to make from at-bat to at-bat.

In the first inning, Turner took two called strikes, one inside and one outside, before the bat left his shoulder. On a one-and-two count, he got a cutter inside, and took a big hack. Foul ball.

That foul ball was in Turner’s head. He thought he missed something there. Keuchel finished him off on the outside.

In the fourth inning, Keuchel thought he’d found a place to beat Turner. To be fair, nobody likes the pitch up and in. Joey Votto once characterized that location as the place where pop ups are born.

This instance proved no exception to the rule.

Keuchel had thrown inside to Turner three times, and gotten two foul balls and a called strike for his troubles. He’d retired the Dodgers’ best hitter twice, and probably thought he had something on the the Tormund Giantsbane lookalike.

The third time Turner came up, though, the hitter had plans.

“My first two at-bats, I was swinging a little bit bigger bat, a 34 and a half,” the third baseman said after the game. “I got beat in a couple of times. So I’m going to switch back to my 33 and a half that I normally use, a little smaller bat.”

Keuchel started him low and inside, but off the plate. Turner had seen that in the first, so he laid off and got a 1-0 count.

Turner’s spin away from the pitch must have intrigued Keuchel. Perhaps he thought Turner might offer at the following pitch if Keuchel could double up on it. So the lefty started the pitch a little further into the middle of the plate, nibbled a little closer to the inside edge, and got Turner to bite.

Hindsight is 20-20, but it really seems like Turner is looking on the inside part of the plate here. All his swings but one have come on pitches on the inside part of the plate, and the pitcher seems to be toying with that eagerness. For the next strike, Keuchel looked to get a called strike away. He did, even though the pitch may not have been a strike.

Turner never offers. He’s looking inside. He’s got that lighter bat, and he knows the pitcher likes that part of the plate. He’s ready.

“Good thing I did, because I didn’t get beat in the third time,” said Turner of switching bats before that fated pitch.

That’s a decent pitch. Righty batters produced a .296 wOBA (about 11% worse than league average) on pitches in that quadrant, and Keuchel’s location is further up and in than most other pitches in the same bucket. As the launch-angle heat map below illustrates, that area usually produces pop ups. (Anything dark orange is launched too high.)

Now, the home run wasn’t a no-doubter. With a 37 degree launch angle and 96 mph exit velocity, it flew a little higher and slower than most others. Andrew Perpetua’s calculator estimated the home-run probability at just 35%. Heat was likely also an aid.

“I knew it was about 98 degrees,” smiled Turner after the game. “So when it’s that hot here, the ball does travel a lot better. And I think I just said it outside: if it’s 10 degrees cooler, that’s probably a routine fly ball in left field.”

But it happened. All because Turner looked for the pitch inside and had the right bat in his hand.