Third baseman Justin Turner will stay with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he announced on Saturday on Twitter.
Turner’s business is a two-year, $ 34 million guarantee, and includes a club option for a third year, sources told Jeff Passan of ESPN.
Let’s run back @Dodgers fans !!! @vaynersports @vaynerbaseball pic.twitter.com/fRY0pvyWMx
– Justin Turner (@ redturn2) February 14, 2021
Turner, 36, became a free agent when his four-year, $ 64 million contract expired after the Dodgers’ World Series victory in October. A member of the Dodgers since 2014, Turner is the player with the longest time on the team and the third longest overall, behind Clayton Kershaw (2008) and Kenley Jansen (2010).
Turner was a newsboy during the first half of his major league career. He was not signed by the New York Mets in December 2013, was unsigned for the next two months and then agreed to a secondary league contract with the Dodgers. At 29, he began to establish himself among the most productive of the game’s third base.
Turner hit .297 / .378 / .508 from 2015 to 2019, accumulating 105 homers, 147 doubles and 21.9 FanGraphs wins over substitution in 645 games of the regular season. He formed an All-Star team, finished in the top 10 in the National League MVP by voting on two occasions and set the tone for the Dodgers’ batting philosophy as their most consistent player.
Along the way, Turner contributed several memorable post-season moments, most notably his home run against the Chicago Cubs in Game 2 of the 2017 NL Championship Series. According to the ESPN Stats & Information survey, he ranks first in Dodgers’ postseason history in hits (79), home runs (12), runs (40) and RBIs (41).
His greatest achievement finally came last season, when Turner – a longtime fan of the Dodgers who grew up in Lakewood, California, and identifies Kirk Gibson’s famous 1988 home run in the 1988 World Series as his first baseball memory – helped lead the franchise to its first championship in over 30 years.
Turner posted 1,066 OPS in six World Series games against the Tampa Bay Rays, but the highlight of his career was tarnished after Major League Baseball informed the Dodgers in the final stages of the eventual clincher that Turner had tested positive for COVID-19.
Turner, the representative of the Dodgers, was removed to begin the eighth inning of Game 6 and was not on the pitch to celebrate the final exit. But he broke protocol and went back to the field to take pictures with the World Series trophy and was seen around masked teammates, drawing the ire of MLB officials and rampant criticism from people across the country. The MLB finally decided not to discipline him.
ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez contributed to this report.