LOS ANGELES – The Brewers were without one of their top hitters for Thursday’s series opener against the Dodgers, as second baseman Brice Turang was receiving treatment for a left knee injury.
Turang, Milwaukee’s Platinum Glove Award-winning second baseman, was absent from Thursday’s starting lineup after undergoing an MRI scan earlier in the day. Manager Pat Murphy said Turang had been experiencing knee pain for some time, and it reached a point where he needed time off.
“We don’t know how long,” Murphy said. “They’re saying day to day.”
Turang was awaiting a second opinion of the MRI as of Thursday afternoon, but Murphy indicated that the initial read “did not reveal anything to be too worried about,” and suggested that whatever was causing Turang’s pain could be cured with rest.
The timing couldn’t be much worse for the Brewers on multiple fronts.
Offensively, their brand of offense, fueled not by power but by plate discipline and speed, has not been producing at the same clip. The team went into Thursday night with an 8-8 record over its last 16 games while batting .221 with 3.56 runs per game, after ranking fifth in the Majors at 5.10 runs per game prior to that stretch. The Brewers particularly struggled to score runs during a three-game sweep at the hands of the Padres on the first leg of this West Coast road trip in San Diego, where Milwaukee went 3-for-28 with 12 strikeouts with runners in scoring position.
Turang has an .810 OPS this season in a team-high 523 plate appearances, is the Brewers’ leader in both Baseball-Reference WAR (5.3) and Fangraphs WAR (4.2), ranks second on the team with 16 stolen bases and fourth in weighted runs created plus (124), a measure of offensive production.
Defensively, Turang’s absence comes at a time when the Brewers’ rookie starting shortstop, Cooper Pratt, is on the 15-day injured list with a strained hamstring. For a team that wins with run prevention, being without both of its middle infielders is suboptimal, to put it mildly.
As a result, Thursday’s lineup card looked nothing like the one the Brewers would hope to field against the Dodgers should these teams meet again in the postseason. Backup catcher Gary Sánchez, one of the few hitters who produced in San Diego, batted in the three-hole and manned first base. First baseman Andrew Vaughn started at third, a position he’s had to play on occasion over the past week because of injuries. And slumping designated hitter Christian Yelich and catcher William Contreras remained at the bottom half of the lineup card, hitting sixth and seventh.
“We just keep putting baseball players out there,” Murphy said. “Vaughn at third, Gary at first. It’s not ideal. It doesn’t show up in the metrics as, ‘Yeah, this is going to be a great defensive team out there.' But just like [Jake] Bauers didn’t show up great defensively in right field before the season, he’s proven us wrong.
“So, Gary’s a baseball player. And his bat – how do we keep him out of there? And how do you get William going if you don’t put him in there? So, that’s the dilemma I’m in. Is it ugly with Pratt and Turang out? The middle infield out? That’s ugly, but there’s not much you can do."