Has Brice Turang (Already!) Become the Best Second Baseman in Brewers History?

He has probably had 2 of the best seasons of Brewers 2B ever but he is going to need to do I for longer to be the best ever. Gantner and Rickie were good for a while and played on good teams. I would say Brice needs like 2-3 more years at the 4-5 WAR area to go against guys with 11 and 17 years. I do think that list is pretty flawed but will leave that for now. 

I think he has earned a longer-termed contract.

2 hours ago, Samurai Bucky said:

I think he has earned a longer-termed contract.

He has, agreed.  The questions are what he thinks he is worth and - with the group of young middle infielders coming up in the system - what the front office would be willing to pay him.

11 hours ago, jay87shot said:

He has probably had 2 of the best seasons of Brewers 2B ever but he is going to need to do I for longer to be the best ever. Gantner and Rickie were good for a while and played on good teams. I would say Brice needs like 2-3 more years at the 4-5 WAR area to go against guys with 11 and 17 years. I do think that list is pretty flawed but will leave that for now. 

An interesting question to me is whether Weeks was ever the "best" second baseman in the majors.  It seemed fairly clearly this season that either Turang or Hoerner were, across the majors, and maybe Brice had a case for that last year due to his speed and D.  Unsure Rickie ever was, while playing in more offensive times.
And Brice just played his age 25 season.  He is just coming into his prime.  That is the biggest reason for the club to try to sign him to a deal through his arbitration years, plus a couple of more.

Gantner had 4.3 bWAR in his career year, 1983. He never had another season above 2.6 bWAR, and he only topped 2 bWAR four other times.

Fernando Vina wasn’t even a poor man’s Jim Gantner, with a top Brewers bWAR of 3.1 and nothing else over 1.7.  Peaked at 3.2 with St. Louis in 2000.

Ronnie Belliard? Top two Brewers seasons of 3.5 and 2.4.  Had his best year with Cleveland at 4.5 in 2005.

Weeks, unlike the other three, actually put up two 3-WAR seasons as a Brewer: 3.6 and 3.0.

Turang, in just three seasons, already has two — 4.7 last year, 5.5 this year — that beat any season any of those four guys ever put up.  

He has already clearly eclipsed all of them, unless you want to argue that standing around for 17 years taking up space on mostly bad teams amounts to something other than mediocrity.

Molitor had the only Brewers 2b career better than Turang’s, barely — 12.1 bWAR to 11.7, both in three seasons.  I don’t know what to do about 1990, when Molitor put up 3.2 bWAR in 103 games, just 60 at 2b. Turang won’t be Paul Molitor, but if he has one or two more good years, he’ll be a greater Brewers 2b than Paul Molitor was.

(Shout out to Don Money — 5.1 bWAR in his only year as a primary 2b, 1977.)

I think these conversations should be broken into peak value and long term value.  Obviously, peak value would be just 1 season.  I would define long term value as 5+ seasons.  With that said, here are the peak seasons to consider:

• Weeks - 2010 - 6 fWAR - 127 wRC+
• Molitor - 1979 - 5.1 fAR - 127 wRC+
• Molitor - 1982 - 5.6 fWAR - 132 xRC+
• Turang - 2025 4.4 fWAR - 124 wRC+

I think Molitor wins the peak conversation.  Weeks wins the long term battle,.  If Brice plays close to his 2025 levels moving forward, he could take both titles in this conversation.

That's fair.  I should have known that, so Weeks takes the peak and long term value award.