Brice Turang Has Baseball's Most Adaptable Swing

[Matthew Trueblood]

There are better players on the Brewers, but there's probably not one your uncle will ever like better.

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images

As the centerpiece of the team's great defense and their leadoff hitter against most right-handed opposing starters, Brice Turang was obviously essential to the Brewers' success in 2024. He followed up a rookie season that included a long demotion to the minor leagues and some deep doubts about his viability as an everyday player with a campaign in which he still had periods of major struggle, but was unmistakably valuable and occasionally star-caliber.

Power wasn't part of Turang's improvement, of course. He only had 35 extra-base hits in 619 regular-season plate appearances, and only seven of those were homers. He did, however, make lots of contact, which fueled a dramatic improvement in batting average and on-base percentage. Thanks to Statcast bat-tracking data released in early May, we know that a key element of his contact skills is the compactness of his swing. Among players with at least 300 tracked swings this year, only Luis Arraez had a "shorter" swing than Turang's--using the system's definition of swing length, which is the total three-dimensional movement of the tip of the bat from the start of the swing through the contact point.

Most of the time, though, short swings mean slow swings, and indeed, Turang's average swing speed was the 10th-lowest in the qualifying group. That costs power, and when it comes from the fundamental inability to generate bat speed, it's a real problem. Inescapably low swing speeds make you unthreatening to the point where pitchers will come straight after you, denying you the ability to draw walks, and they leave you unable to generate the pop necessary to make up for that.

So, we need to know more than average swing speeds and swing length. On his superb shiny app, analyst Kyle Bland offers a helpful tool: each batter's Coefficient of Variation (CoV) in swing speeds, which is calculated by dividing the standard deviation of a player's distribution of swing speeds by their average swing speed. Bland's table reports the raw CoV multiplied by 100, for ease of display and understanding. From it, we can figure out how much a hitter's swing speeds tended to vary. Did they get off their 'A' swing every time, or did they frequently slow things down, either because they had trouble identifying and attacking the ball or to give themselves a better chance of making contact?

In 2024, only the Rays' Jose Caballero had a higher CoV than Turang's, which suggests a high level of adaptability in Turang's swing. But wait: is higher always better in CoV? Not really! Much depends on how hard you swing, on average. If you're capable of elite swing speeds on a consistent basis, like Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton, you don't want to have a high CoV. It makes plenty of sense for you to swing at that maximally dangerous speed, more or less, every time. You're likely to hit for more than enough power to make up for swinging and missing a lot, if indeed that's what happens.

The lower your average swing speed, the better news it is if you have a high CoV, because that means you're at least occasionally getting off a good, hard, lethal swing--but then again, lower average swing speed is a bad thing. So, I played with Bland's numbers a bit. Taking the geometric mean of each player's average swing speed and their CoV, I then divided by swing length--because there's a strong correlation between swing length and contact rate, and I wanted to make sure we weren't unduly rewarding players with long, sweeping swings who swing fast and modulate that speed a lot, but still whiff too much as a result of their bat paths.

Here's the leaderboard for Swing Adaptability Score (SAS).

Hitter	Team	SAS
Brice Turang	MIL	3.67
Alex Verdugo	NYY	3.37
José Caballero	TB	3.35
Luis Arraez	SD	3.32
Nolan Schanuel	LAA	3.30
Steven Kwan	CLE	3.27
Nolan Jones	COL	3.22
Anthony Rizzo	NYY	3.22

Turang not only paces the league, but does so comfortably. He takes one of the most compact swings in the league, which is why he whiffed on barely over 13 percent of his swings this year, but unlike other specialists in short swings like Arraez, he can generate a lot of bat speed when he elects to sit on a pitch and attack it.

This doesn't mean Turang will break out in some further way in 2025. That question will depend on how many adjustments he can continue to make, including in terms of approach and mindset. However, if a player's upside does hinge on their ability to adjust, it's awfully encouraging to have so much evidence that they do that specific thing better than just about anyone else in the league. Turang is a good and valuable player even if he doesn't get materially better at bat, because of the sheer brilliance of his defense and baserunning. Because he's shown a mature ability to throttle up and down with his bat speed and to address the ball directly, though, he has at least some chance of taking the quantum offensive leap his manager envisioned for him seven months ago.

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[BrewerFan]

4.6 WAR season and I think he's still got 20 and 30-40 points left on his BA/OBP respectively. 

All he has to do is balance out the home and road splits. .291/.341/.412 on the road. Pretty ugly at home, but he has a .258 BABIP...which I'd expect to be closer to his road ~.330 or so given his style of play, so, I don't expect a huge improvement in power, but I've always said he reminds me of Trea Turner. His defense, speed, and versatility, and how he played in the post-season was huge. Not gonna write off Ortiz because of a poor post-season, but it's a good sign to me when you have good ABs in the playoffs. Means you can handle the pressure, not trying to do too much. Kinda like going opposite field twice.

 

Anyway, interesting write-up. Turang is a guy I'd like to extend right now....but that's a bit tricky. 4.6 WAR...how do you actually value him? If he were a FA, I doubt anyone would argue he's getting paid like Willy, so not all WAR is valued the same. Is 7/50 with a couple TOs for say 18-20M, 5M buyout reasonable? 

 

 

[Jason Wang]

7 hours ago, BrewerFan said:

Anyway, interesting write-up. Turang is a guy I'd like to extend right now....but that's a bit tricky. 4.6 WAR...how do you actually value him? If he were a FA, I doubt anyone would argue he's getting paid like Willy, so not all WAR is valued the same. Is 7/50 with a couple TOs for say 18-20M, 5M buyout reasonable? 

 

i would do $700mm/10 years with $68mm of each year deferred by ten years

[WAN2]

Me thinks this is the only time anyone has connected "lethal swing" with Turang.  

[BrewerFan]

16 hours ago, Jason Wang said:

i would do $700mm/10 years with $68mm of each year deferred by ten years

....would this be your way of saying you'd be against extending Turang?

[Jason Wang]

1 hour ago, BrewerFan said:

....would this be your way of saying you'd be against extending Turang?

In all seriousness, I'm not convinced either way. He's pre-arb and still pretty young so I don't think there's a huge rush. If he's able to perform a little better against offspeed and curveballs, he could be a really interesting contact/speed/defense combo for the team.

but I also think it would be cool if he got the ohtani contract for the memes idk 

[BrewerFan]

33 minutes ago, Jason Wang said:

In all seriousness, I'm not convinced either way. He's pre-arb and still pretty young so I don't think there's a huge rush. If he's able to perform a little better against offspeed and curveballs, he could be a really interesting contact/speed/defense combo for the team.

but I also think it would be cool if he got the ohtani contract for the memes idk 

I just feel like a contract in which we defer 68M a year would make Clancy just...lose his mind with joy. He's proposed so many..."optimistic," signings with these massive deferrals, it's long past time we gave him one.

 

@Matthew Truebloodwithout going as in-depth, care to give a quick overview where Frelick falls in on the short swing/bat speed spectrum? He seems like he may benefit with some shorter swings with less bat speed at times. 

[Jason Wang]

2 hours ago, BrewerFan said:

I just feel like a contract in which we defer 68M a year would make Clancy just...lose his mind with joy. He's proposed so many..."optimistic," signings with these massive deferrals, it's long past time we gave him one.

has anyone tried deferring contracts by .7 x 10^106 years i.e. after the proposed heat death of the universe? Think it would be a good way to clear payroll to build a more solid winning team.

why hasn't any front office done this? are they stupid?

[BrewerFan]

6 hours ago, Jason Wang said:

has anyone tried deferring contracts by .7 x 10^106 years i.e. after the proposed heat death of the universe? Think it would be a good way to clear payroll to build a more solid winning team.

why hasn't any front office done this? are they stupid?

I think it's time we got on the phone with Scott Boras about a certain FA OF from the Bronx(I don't actually know it's Boras...I just assume it is).

And hell, if we're going to defer that much, might as well go after Cole as well. 

 

But you have to be reasonable. 25M signing bonus. Then he can make sure his family is taken care of....forever with the deferred money!

 

I'm actually curious what Soto gets. I think it's possible he gets more than Ohtani. Maybe not 700M, but if he got a 600M deal with no deferred money, that'd be considered more, right? Toronto was willing to sign Ohtani. Soto doesn't pitch...that we know of, but he's still just 26. If there's a guy I'm giving 12/600M to, it's...nobody, but if it has to be someone, it's a guy with his skill set. 

The funniest would be the Mets or the Red Sox(though...they apparently forgot they can spend money). However...we can all agree, the team that really needs a top-of-the-order left-handed bat is the Dodgers. Odds on them dropping another billion in FA to sign Soto, Adames, and...eh, whoever else they decide. 

 

I'm not sure what to put in blue at this point. 

[Matthew Trueblood]

On 10/11/2024 at 10:38 PM, BrewerFan said:

I just feel like a contract in which we defer 68M a year would make Clancy just...lose his mind with joy. He's proposed so many..."optimistic," signings with these massive deferrals, it's long past time we gave him one.

 

@Matthew Truebloodwithout going as in-depth, care to give a quick overview where Frelick falls in on the short swing/bat speed spectrum? He seems like he may benefit with some shorter swings with less bat speed at times. 

Sal has a similarly low average swing speed and a similarly high level of variability in those speeds. Swing length is not nearly as short as Turang's, though still shorter than the league average. Overall, his SAS is 25th-best, and this is out of 471, so he has an adaptable swing. I'm not sure you'd want him to shorten up any further, either, since he so rarely generates power. I think learning to occasionally get big and ambush a pitch is the best shot at turning a corner for him.