Can Justin Turner accomplish this crazy stat?

Phil Gurnee ♦ April 26, 2017 ♦ 1 Comment

As of right now on 04/26/2017 Justin Turner has eighty plate appearances, no home runs, and an OPS > .900.

Only one LAD in history has ever accomplished this task in March/April.

His name was Brett Butler and it was 1994.

How about other months?

Hmm. Much more common in May. Jose Offerman did it twice, Rafy Furcal once, and Juan Pierre in beast mode did it once.

Nobody did it in June

Nobody did it in July

Here we go. Ted Sizemore did it in August of 1970 one season removed from his ROY season of 1969. Sizemore would only hit one home run in 1970 and had a season OPS of only .717 so you can imagine what his other monthly splits were.  If you can’t imagine let me show the ugliness:

Split          PA   BA  OBP  SLG  OPS
April/March    60 .255 .317 .291 .608
May            79 .282 .354 .338 .692
June           30 .192 .300 .192 .492
July           45 .282 .356 .359 .715
August        105 .429 .457 .469 .927
Sept/Oct       57 .235 .316 .275 .590

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 4/26/2017.

Somehow the Dodgers were able to trade Sizemore for Dick Allen in the winter of 1970. What a heist.

Nobody did it in Sept/Oct.

Turner has a hard task ahead of him over the next six games left in April. He can’t hit a home run but he has to hit to keep the OPS over .900.

Can he do it? Probably not. He’ll probably blast three home runs including one tonight making all this moot. But it was fun to research.