April is the Only Thing Keeping Brice Turang Atop Brewers Lineup in August

Way back in spring training, Brewers manager Pat Murphy anointed Brice Turang as a key part of his lineup. He predicted a "quantum leap" from the sophomore second baseman, and early on, it looked like that was exactly what was happening. Quickly, Turang established himself as the regular leadoff hitter against right-handed pitchers, thanks to a .312/.375/.441 April and his usual, excellent defensive work. 

Meanwhile, Sal Frelick sputtered and struggled to find his gear. He batted .262/.342/.313 in April, and slowly, the team and the player had to give up on the idea of him as an everyday, top-of-the-order hitter. Turang had, for the first month or two this year, clearly surpassed his fellow 2023 rookie.

What if we just pretend April didn't happen, though? It changes almost nothing for Frelick. In 286 plate appearances since May 1, he's batting .268/.340/.350. The consistency he's demonstrated is nearly metronomic. It's just that, without adequate power, it doesn't make him an especially exciting player. He gets on base about 34 percent of the time. That's a full summary of his offensive skill set, and despite its brevity, it doesn't hold the attention of many fans or analysts for very long.

Compared to what Turang has done over the same span, though, it's downright dominant. In a whopping 348 plate appearances since the start of May, Turang is hitting .238/.297/.330. When Turang is hot, he hits for below-average but noticeable gap power, and he's an elite contact hitter. When he's cold, though, he's merely average in terms of contact, and his power and plate discipline are almost nonexistent. Whether he's hot or not, Frelick puts the ball in play at an extraordinary rate for the modern game, and that sets a high floor for his offensive utility, relative to Turang.

Note the smaller range of numbers on the y-axis in these charts. Frelick has a much higher floor than Turang, and he hovers mostly in a tighter range--although he doesn't spend as much time in the higher portion thereof as Turang can.

Lopping off April makes Frelick look like a much more enticing option for the top of the lineup than Turang. Yet, it's Turang who keeps hitting there. Frelick last led off on May 7, and has batted sixth, seventh, and even eighth lately. Why? In the simplest terms, it's because we can all still see their Aprils in their stats. Though they take slightly different shapes, Frelick and Turang are separated by just .011 in OPS. Turang is a far better basestealer, and, well, he's been there. Inertia is working for him, and against Frelick. When Murphy, the coaching staff, and the front office survey their options each day, the numbers aren't screaming at them to swap those two players.

From that statement follows another question: Shouldn't someone just do this basic trimming of the data, give everyone a new set of numbers, and prompt the change? Why doesn't some savvy wonk in the front office slip an incomplete set of data to Murphy to invite a new way of conceptualizing the lineup, especially with regard to these two hitters?

The answer is chock-full of important truths about baseball, some of which just can't be fully understood in one swoop. It's also fairly simple, verbally: the game doesn't work that way. Recency bias rules the world, and can be especially powerful in this everyday game, where data piles up quickly and it can be easy to convince yourself the last month is sufficient evidence of a permanent change. In reality, though, what we've learned over parts of two seasons with Turang is Frelick is that one is streaky, one is consistent, and neither is a complete, above-average hitter.

At that point, the questions are:

1. How likely is it that Turang will get hot again down the stretch?
2. Is that probability affected by whether he bats leadoff or gets moved down to the bottom of the batting order?
3. Does the Frelick you can reasonably count on getting do enough to be a valuable leadoff hitter, even though he's so rarely going to score himself or put himself in scoring position with extra-base hits or steals?

I would guess that the Brewers have waded through the data, recognized that there are physical and mental tweaks each player has made along the way, and understood that the questions above are the crucial ones. They appear to have decided, at least for now, that rolling the dice on a resurgence from Turang (and preserving his confidence while they await one) makes more sense than accepting the slight upgrade and lost upside of batting Frelick at the top. It's a reasonable stance, because baseball is so complicated and so unpredictable that the last three months are not necessarily more telling than the month right before them. However, with each 0-for-4 Turang takes and each passing day drawing the postseason nearer, it's becoming a more dangerous one.