New York Times has baseball cover story on former NC State star and Nationals SS Trea Turner

If you’re an NC State football and basketball fan, but don’t really follow baseball, then you might have missed what Trea Turner is doing.

I hate to tell ya, but you’re missing out.

Turner, a former NC State superstar, is starting to come into his own and is in the conversation for being a perennial MVP candidate.

If you don’t believe us, just ask the New York Times.

The Times did a full baseball cover story on Trea Turner, with the gist of it being that while he COULD steal 75 bases (yeah, he’s that fast), he probably never will because he’s too good of a hitter.

Let’s Look at Some Facts

Trea Turner has 171 career stolen bases, despite only being in the league for 6 years. He has a season of 46 steals and another at 43. He’s successful on 83% of his attempts, which is better than the best base stealer of all-time, Ricky Henderson, who was pushing 80% of his attempts.

Turner is also a career .296 hitter and while he hasn’t hit 20 HRs yet in a single season, he has two seasons of 19. He led all shortstops in slugging percentage last year and got the 7th most votes for NL MVP.

Some of his coaches think that by accentuating his speed and focusing on stealing bases, he’d get more notoriety and would demand more money in the open market. However, Turner isn’t focused on that, in fact, that is what the entire article is about.

“I should probably back off.” said hitting coach Kevin Long “My stance on this is: I’d love to see him do it. (steal 70+ bases) for a year. But in his mind, he knows. He’s really smart and intelligent, and he knows it’s not worth it, at the end of the day, to kill his body like that.

“Because there’s nobody to replace him. Even if we lost Juan Soto, we might be able to get by. If we lost Trea Turner, we have no shot.”

Turner’s goal isn’t to set records or become the highest-paid SS in the game. His goal is to win, and for his team to win he needs to stay on the field.

Read the full article. It’s got great quotes and an inside look at Turner and his rise to MLB stardom.