For the first time in 58 years, the Los Angeles Dodgers have the National League batting title winner as Trea Turner won the crown after hitting .328 in 148 games played.
Turner becomes the seventh player in Dodgers franchise history to win the award and it marks the eighth time a player from the organization has earned the honor.
The majority of Dodgers batting titles have come while the club was still in Brooklyn. Lefty O’Doul (.368, 1932), Pete Reiser (.343, 1941), Dixie Walker (.357, 1944), Jackie Robinson (.342, 1949) and Carl Furillo (.344, 1953) all won before the team moved to L.A. in 1958.
Prior to Turner, Tommy Davis is the only other Dodgers player to win the award with the club in L.A. He took it home in 1962 and 1963 after hitting .346 and .326, respectively.
Turner hit .322 for the Washington Nationals this season in 96 games before being traded to the Dodgers at the deadline.
With the Dodgers, Turner hit .338 in 52 games but faced some competition near the end of the season from former teammate Juan Soto, who went on a historic stretch in late September.
“He texted me a little while ago and told me he was coming for me, which I had no doubt in my mind that he was gonna be putting good at-bats together,” Turner recently said about the batting title race with Soto.
“So he told me he was coming and he did that, but there’s so much unknown. You don’t know how the at-bats are gonna go, how you’re gonna feel, who you’re facing, this and that. “So we had a few text messages back and forth but seeing me and him up there is pretty cool.”
Soto ended up as the runner-up for the award, finishing with a .313 average.
For the season, Turner posted an MVP-caliber stat line, hitting .328/.375/.536 with 34 doubles, 28 home runs, 32 stolen bases, 107 runs scored and a 141 wRC+. He closed out the regular season in a flurry, clubbing two grand slams in three games.
Turner for NL MVP?
Along with batting average, Turner led the NL in stolen bases, hits (195) and total bases (319). The production and strong close to the season has thrust him into the MVP discussion.
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