Baseball News: As he waved goodbye to Padres fans, the superstar outfielder from San Diego signed a two-year, $85.6 million contract with the Milwaukee Brewers, formally completing a blockbuster trade on Friday morning. Nevertheless,

Brice Turang is Back in Bad Habits. Does the Trade Market Hold the Solution?

Early on this year, it looked like the Brewers’ manager had been prophetic in forecasting a huge step forward from his young second baseman. Now, that start looks more like a hot streak, receding in the rearview. What should the team do about it?

At the end of play on May 15, Brice Turang looked like an All-Star in the making. He was playing his usual stellar defense and racking up stolen bases by the handful, but most importantly, he was batting ..300/.361/.414 in 139 plate appearances. Turang, 24, seemed to have figured out how to use his short swing and simple approach to put the ball in play at an elite rate, and the rest was taking care of itself.

Since the middle of May, though, he’s collapsed back into an only slightly improved version of the hitter he was in the second half of 2023.

With power unavoidably minimal in his profile, Turang’s success depends unusually heavily on consistently putting the ball in play and on taking his walks. When he does the former at an elite level, good things tend to follow. When he’s closer to average in that respect, it’s a safe bet that he’ll be below-average overall. The good version of Turang is not merely good, but nearly elite in waiting for his approach, and that lets him cover the zone and make contact at an exceptional rate. When he’s expanding even at a modest level, as he has for the last two months and change, everything snowballs on him.

Obviously, the ideal resolution to this creeping problem is Turang turning things around. The Brewers can’t head down the stretch of this season with an empty .315 OBP coming from their leadoff spot, but maybe showing him numbers like these and helping him rededicate himself to the project of plate discipline will facilitate a return to the exciting level of production he gave them in the early going. Specifically, he needs to lay off the ball low and away, and maybe having him think about cutting the plate in half would permit that to happen again.

Just in case that exhortation doesn’t work, though, what else could the team do? Is there a solution out there on the trade market?

One fascinating would-be trade candidate is the Rockies’ Ryan McMahon, who has played both second and third base in his career and would bring power and plate discipline (though also a high strikeout rate) to the lineup and who is under team control for three more seasons on an extension he signed in 2022. Reportedly, though, the Rockies have flatly told would-be suitors that McMahon isn’t going anywhere, so let’s set that possibility aside.

With Christian Yelich hurt, the team needs an infusion of offensive talent, ideally toward the top of the order. Maybe understanding how Turang has struggled over a prolonged period is just a chance

to think about a new set of options for landing such a player. The Reds’ Jonathan India is hitting .274/.371/.415 on the season, and could slot in at second base or as the DH on any given day. That’s a tricky one, though, because he has two remaining years of team control after this one, so intradivision trade stigmas might come into play.