Dodgers News: Turner’s First Day Back On The Job

In his first action of Spring Training, Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner had himself quite a day. He went 1-for-1 at the plate with two runs scored, a double, a run batted in, and a walk. He also made a few good plays in the field at third base that showed just how healthy he is right now.

The belief going forward is that the Dodgers are going to evaluate Turner over the next 24 hours to see if he can give it a go for Wednesday, and then they’ll do the same thing in order to get him ready for the game on Friday. They’re not going to push him and rush him, nor should they.

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Courtesy of Eric Stephen over at True Blue LA:

“Playing today is only half the test. It’s about seeing how I bounce back tomorrow,” Turner said. “Hopefully everything feels good and we’ll continue to move forward and stretch some games out hopefully by the end of the week.”

Hopefully Turner is right and that everything feels good in the next little while. This is the beginning of the road back for Turner, at least as far as games are concerned, and he looked extremely good out there. Whether or not that materializes over time is up to both Turner and the coaching staff.

Or, as manager Dave Roberts put it:

“Justin is very good in the batters box, but to make some plays on defense, and run the bases, it was a full day,” Roberts said. “I’ll be anxious to see how he feels tomorrow.”

Everyone is being cautiously optimistic as far as Justin Turner goes, and that’s the right way to go about all of this. You can’t rush results in this industry, especially when a player is coming off of a microfracture surgery. It takes time. So far, though, the result was great on the field. We’ll see how it transpires over time.