Brice Turang Has Simply Seized Control

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

For many, many Brewers fans, Bill Hall's Mothers Day walkoff homer in 2006 was a watershed moment. It was very early in the days of players using pink bats for breast cancer awareness on that day; that made it visually interesting and memorable. For young fans who'd grown up in a household forever abuzz about the team's dramatic Easter win in 1987, it was a new springtime landmark to savor, one that belonged to the new generation.

It also felt like a turning point—an announcement that the winds of positive change were pulling the organization out of the doldrums in which they'd been mired for the previous few years. Hall himself had been a nice find in 2005, and he blossoming into someone about whom to be downright excited. That team would ultimately win just 75 games, but it sowed the seeds that germinated the following year. In one sense, the franchise has not been the same since that game; they've become a perennially competitive team.

There were no competitive doldrums to blow away for Brice Turang on Sunday, but beating the Yankees would mean sweeping the weekend series between the two teams. In an admittedly messy American League, the Bronx Bombers look as much like a juggernaut as anyone, and the Brewers had revenge to ponder after New York embarrassed them so badly in the great Torpedoing of the season-opening series in 2025. On so many levels, what Turang did in the bottom of the ninth inning was immensely satisfying.

One of the loveliest things about the homer, though, is the way its parallels with Hall's also highlight the important distinctions to be drawn. This team is vastly different from that one; so is its Mothers Day hero. Hall had a great 2006, with 35 homers and 78 total extra-base hits. Even then, though, it was pretty clear he was enjoying a career year. He'd never be anywhere near that good again; he lost his starting job by 2009.

That's not going to happen with Turang. Whether he signs an extension with Milwaukee or is eventually traded, it's increasingly clear that the team's 2018 first-round pick is going to go down as one of the best players in franchise history. This homer won't be the Turang highlight; it'll just be one of several. We already have a handful of other candidates, in fact.

Each year, Turang gets better at the plate. That can't go on forever, of course. In fact, it would be a major shock if he gets much better than this, at any point. Then again, try telling your mid-2023 self that Turang—the scrappy, slappy glove man demoted to Triple-A Nashville mid-year—would push his OPS+ to 86 in 2024; then 120 in 2025; then 163 in 2026. What he's doing is phenomenally improbable, and it's only possible because he's been assiduous and brilliant in his approach to improving at the plate.

We've already talked at length about how Turang has altered his swing plane over the years. Just to update that a bit, though: his average swing tilt (as measured by Statcast) is now 37° this year, up from 31° last year. It was somewhat notable that he went from 29° in 2023 to that 31° figure in 2025. Remember about a decade ago, when the term "swing changer" came into vogue, as players leaned into the fly-ball revolution? When you see a 6° change in swing plane from one year to the next, that's a swing changer. Turang was a great hitter last year, but he overhauled what he's doing at the plate coming into this season.

Here's an animated look at his swing from 2025. This is a digital visualization of a composite of swings, not an actual capture of a particular one, but it can make it easier to see several important things. Firstly, look at how far apart his feet are. (This is meant to show only the actual swing, so his stride is done at this point; the front foot is down already.) Note, too, the openness of his front foot and hip. From those elements of his lower-half operation comes a flatter-than-average swing, albeit one that covered the zone wonderfully well and produced plenty of hard contact to all fields.

Now, compare that to this visualization of Turang for 2026. Check on the same things: distance between feet, the angle of the front foot and hip relative to the incoming pitch. But look, too, at the shoulders.

Without dipping his back shoulder in a way that costs him bat speed or takes him off the plane of the pitch, Turang can now create more loft in his swing, because he's more upright as he swings. Being more upright—in other words, striding shorter—can mean generating less energy and (therefore) less power, but Turang's slightly more closed lower half lets him create torque by uncoiling with a bit more lift, the front shoulder rolling upward and outward more forcefully so that the top hand can steer the bat "underneath" his front side, as hitting people say.

Torque and bat speed aren't the sources of Turang's improvements this year, though. Strength is certainly a component—getting into the right position to drive the ball out to the left of dead center on a pitch breaking down and in on you takes terrific strength—but Turang's bat speed is almost exactly where it was last year. The percentage of his swings topping 75 MPH in bat speed—what Statcast dubs Fast Swings—is actually down quite a bit, from 18.1% to 10.8%.

Much of the added value comes, instead, from all that newfound tilt. Take two equally fast swings in terms of sheer Statcast speed measurements, and the one with more tilt is actually faster, in practical terms, so there's a kind of hidden bat speed bump in what Turang is doing this year. Another big chunk of his value comes from better swing decisions, and the league's smaller strike zone, especially for lefty batters. His walk rate is through the roof, which is why he's leading the National League in on-base percentage.

However, there's also something to the way his swing speeds are distributed from which we can learn. Here are those distributions for each of Turang's big-league seasons (though bat-tracking data goes back only to the middle of his rookie year, 2023).

He pushed the right edge of that distribution more in 2025, but look at how much more clustered his swing speeds are this year. Turang isn't trying to outguess pitchers and put his 'A+' swing on mistakes, but nor is he using a bimodal swing plan wherein he slows down or speeds up based on what he's looking for and what he sees as the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. This year, Turang is getting off his 'A-' swing at a much higher rate, because he knows it will work. With more tilt in the bat path and better swing decisions, he ends up with lots of ways to achieve a good outcome, if he can just take a representative swing every time he swings at all.

Instead of comparing him only to himself, perhaps we can try comparing him to some relevant players who make natural foils. Here's Turang's distribution for this year, along with teammate Sal Frelick and fellow NL Central second basemen Nico Hoerner and Brandon Lowe.

Few hitters in the game are more grip it-and-rip it than Lowe, which shows up here—not just in how many of his swings cluster into the small range at the right of his distribution, but in the visible rightward skew of that curve itself. He's pushing for maximum bat speed whenever he can lock onto a pitch. Frelick is the opposite end of the spectrum, very often decelerating his swing to make contact and using two different strokes based on what he's expecting or what the team needs. With his flatter, slower swing, that's necessary; it's the only way he can produce positive outcomes across a broad swath of situations.

Hoerner is even more extreme than Turang in his effort to get off the same swing every time. As you can see, though, the swing he's repeating so diligently is slower. It's also flatter. Hoerner has a great feel for contact in his own right, but he hasn't figured out how to impact the ball the way Turang has—and if he ever did, it would probably have to come with the kinds of sacrifices Turang has found ways not to make this spring. Finding that sweet spot where he's maximizing per-swing output without losing consistency or adaptability is hugely valuable and impressive; Turang has threaded a needle.

In the modern game, almost no one has a durable, true talent level of .298/.422/.511. Turang will probably come back to Earth a bit from this apex. He's been incredibly good, though, and he's been this way for 400 plate appearances, dating back to last August. To finish as well as he did last year and still make a major swing adjustment this year speaks to the plasticity and the ambition in Turang. He's a genuine superstar, and with William Contreras and Jackson Chourio hitting on either side of him, he could become the centerpiece of one of baseball's best offenses over the next year and a half.

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[Team Canada]

Aaron Judge is a fan:

“He's one of my favorite players to watch in the game right now. At the plate, when we were playing for Team USA. I wanted him up with guys on base, in a big situation, because he always came through for us. He's going to be a bright young star in this game for a long time."

[gregmag]

He has worked on improving throughout his pro career. Even during his rookie struggles, I had no doubt he would end up as a productive major league hitter. But I never imagined his ceiling was this high. 

[homer]

Curt Hogg called it last year before he really took off. Paraphrasing but he said something to the effect of "The biggest show during BP is not who you'd expect. It's Brice Turang"