Third baseman Justin Turner will stay with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he announced on Twitter on Saturday.
Turner’s deal is guaranteed for two years, $ 34 million, and includes a third-year club option, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
Turner, 36, became a free agent when his four-year $ 64 million contract expired after the Dodgers’ World Series Championship in October. Turner, a member of the Dodgers since 2014, is the longest-serving player on the team and the third longest overall, behind Clayton Kershaw (2008) and Kenley Jansen (2010).
Turner was one of many during the first half of his Major League-career. The New York Mets did not bid for him in December 2013, he remained unsigned for the next two months, then agreed to a minor league contract with the Dodgers. At the age of 29, he began to establish himself among the third most prolific point guards in the game.
Lettts gooo it back @Dodgers fans !!! @vijfzintuigen @vijfzintuigen pic.twitter.com/fRY0pvyWMx
– Justin Turner (@ redturn2) February 14, 2021
Turner hit .297 / .378 / .508 from 2015 to 2019, amassing 105 home runs, 147 doubles and 21.9 FanGraphs wins over substitution in 645 regular season games. He made an All-Star team, finished in the top 10 in the National League MVP twice, and set the tone for the Dodgers’ batting philosophy as their most consistent performer.
Along the way, Turner contributed several memorable moments in the postseason, most notably his walk-off homer against the Chicago Cubs in Game 2 of the 2017 National League Championship Series. According to ESPN Stats & Information, he is in first place in the postseason. history of the Dodgers in hits (79), home runs (12), runs (40) and RBIs (41).
His greatest achievement finally came last season, when Turner – a lifelong Dodgers fan who grew up in Lakewood, California, identifying Kirk Gibson’s famed pinch homer as his earliest memory of baseball – helped propel the franchise to its first championship in more than 30 years. years.
Turner posted a 1,066 OPS in six World Series games against the Tampa Bay Rays, but the pinnacle of his career was clouded after the Major Leagues informed the Dodgers in the later stages of an eventual deciding factor that Turner had tested positive for COVID-19.
Turner, the player representative for the Dodgers, was eliminated at the start of the eighth inning and was not on the field to celebrate the last out. But he broke protocol and took to the field again to shoot with the World Series trophy and was seen without a mask around his teammates, enraged by MLB officials and rampant criticism from people across the country. MLB ultimately decided not to discipline him.
ESPN’s Alden González contributed to this report.