Trea Turner isn’t moving off shortstop (yet). The Phillies’ goal for now: Help him get better.

On the first day of the rest of their season, Alec Bohm practiced picking throws out of the dirt at first base; Bryson Stott worked on cutoffs and relays at third; Bryce Harper ran down fly balls in the outfield.

And Trea Turner? He was right there at shortstop.

Just like always.

For Luis Arraez, the best available hitter in an extreme seller’s trade market, the Phillies finally took Harper up on his standing offer to move back to the outfield and displaced three-fourths of their infield.

» READ MORE: Low on prospect capital, loaded with needs, the Phillies’ best asset at the deadline turned out to be ... Bryce Harper

Creative, right? But the one infielder who didn’t switch positions happens to be among the worst defenders in the sport this season, based on both the eye test and metrics.

Was there discussion of moving Turner off shortstop?

“Zero,” interim manager Don Mattingly said.

“There was not,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “Not at this point, no.”

OK, let’s dispel a myth/social media fabrication: Turner didn’t decline to switch positions. The Phillies never asked him to. Not after Harper set all of this in motion by raising his hand to go to the outfield.

None of these moves are permanent. Harper will return to first base next season; Stott will go back to the middle infield; Bohm is a pending free agent. This is a 49-game experiment to add a three-time batting champion to the middle of a lineup that needed more sizzle.

Arraez brings sizzle, spice, and a knack for forcing the action with his uncanny ability to put the ball in play. Team officials think that will outweigh eight weeks of possibly weakening a defense that wasn’t steady in the first place.

When the Phillies move Turner, they want it to be for good.

In time, they will move him. Turner turned 33 in June and is under contract for seven more years. The conversation about vacating shortstop will come … eventually. Maybe even after this season.

But Turner hasn’t played the outfield in 10 years, since a 45-game cameo as a rookie with the Nationals in 2016. He played 49 games at second base after getting traded to the Dodgers in 2021. Otherwise, it has been shortstop.

» READ MORE: From June: What if the Phillies’ most impactful addition was a resurgent Trea Turner? He’s working to make it happen.

For now, the Phillies are focused on helping Turner get better — or at least closer to last season, when he played the best defense of his career en route to a fifth-place finish in the National League MVP race.

“Trea’s won a World Series as a shortstop [with the Nationals in 2019]; he’s won a division back-to-back years; he’s played a high level of shortstop last year; he’s still athletic,” infield coach Bobby Dickerson said on The Inquirer’s Phillies Extra podcast. “All those things I don’t see diminishing. He can stay at shortstop.

“How does it happen? He’s got to put a chip on his shoulders and say, ‘The way to quiet everybody is to make plays, to do my job and do it right and do it good. I always talk about shortstop as the quarterback position. Out on the field, quarterbacking is a person that calms everything down instead of creating more chaos. We’ve got to get back to leading as a shortstop — make plays, play it calm, let everybody breathe. That’s the only way he stays there.

“My job is to help him stay there. I’ll feel like I failed if we don’t get this done. I’ve seen him play it. And until he’s moved, he’s our shortstop, and we’re going to get after it every day and get it done.”

Turner entered the weekend with 18 errors, second-most behind Nationals shortstop CJ Abrams. He ranked last among shortstops in defensive runs saved (minus-11), according to Sports Info Solutions, and third-to-last in Statcast’s fielding run value (minus-8).

In four games out of the All-Star break, he made four errors. He had six in 17 games through Wednesday. The past week has been better, with diving plays to his left to take hits from Jake Rogers last Friday night in Baltimore and the Nationals’ Jorbit Vivas and Daylen Lile at home Tuesday and Wednesday.

It’s also not coincidental that Turner’s downturn in the field began amid early-season struggles at the plate. Although he has turned it around over the last six weeks, he was hitting .216 with a .595 OPS on June 15.

“The offense at the beginning of the year was probably in his head a little bit,” Phillies radio analyst and former shortstop Kevin Stocker said on Phillies Extra. “He struggled out of the gate offensively, which has always carried him, and sometimes when you take that out to the field, you’re still kind of thinking about it … and then the routine play eats you up.

» READ MORE: What makes Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber such unique stars? We asked each about the other.

“It’s a classic case of kind of getting the yips. You don’t know whether to charge the ball, whether to go back on a ball, and that is the worst when you get that as an infielder. It’s incredibly difficult to get out of that.

“The other night, he made an amazing play going to his left. The angle plays, you don’t have time to think about it, [and] you make it. It’s that routine play. … What the Phillies need is Trea needs to make the routine play. The great plays are great, but if you don’t get the routine out and you give an extra out to the bullpen that has been struggling, it’s trouble.”

But in uprooting three infielders, the Phillies left Turner alone.

For now.

“We didn’t even discuss it with him at this point,” Dombrowski said. “He’s done it before and he works hard at it. He’s our shortstop, and that’s where he’s staying right now.”

Fire up the flux capacitor, and time travel to Oct. 4, 2025.

It’s Game 1 of the division series. The Phillies lead, 3-2, in the seventh inning at home against the Dodgers. David Robertson gives up a leadoff single and hits a batter before Matt Strahm allows a three-run homer. The Phillies lose, 5-3.

Now, travel to Oct. 5, 2024. It’s Game 1 of the division series. The Phillies lead, 1-0, in the eighth inning at home against the Mets. Jeff Hoffman gives up a leadoff single, a walk, and an RBI single before Strahm allows the go-ahead single, a sacrifice fly, and another single. Orion Kerkering enters and yields an RBI single and a sacrifice fly. The Phillies lose, 6-2.

» READ MORE: Baseball celebrated itself with All-Star Week. Next up: Avoiding self-destruction with a looming labor fight

The point is, the bullpen is the source of Phillies playoff disappointments dating to Craig Kimbrel’s meltdowns in Games 3 and 4 of the 2023 NLCS in Arizona. They have Jhoan Duran in the ninth inning now, but getting to him could still be problematic even after the deadline additions of Caleb Kilian and veteran lefty Brooks Raley.

At present, the starter-to-Duran bridge consists of Jonathan Bowlan, José Alvarado, Kerkering, Tim Mayza, Kilian and Raley.

Maybe it will be enough. History says it won’t.

So, hard-throwing Alex McFarlane likely will get another look after retiring Shohei Ohtani in his major league debut July 22. Since then, he gave up one hit and two walks in three scoreless outings in triple A.

Rival scouts wonder if the Phillies will push top prospect Gage Wood to the big leagues as a reliever. Wood, who has a 4.32 ERA in 11 starts in double A, pitched out of the bullpen as a freshman in college at Arkansas.

“Would I consider it?” Dombrowski said. “We have not discussed that at all at this point.”

Key words: “At this point.”

The Phillies are monitoring Wood’s innings — 68 and counting — with no plans to shut him down before the end of the minor-league season.

“He’s a good prospect and we really like him,” Dombrowski said. “But we haven’t talked even talked about that.”

A partial list of starting pitchers who got traded before the deadline: Tarik Skubal, Kevin Gausman, Clay Holmes, Robbie Ray, Casey Mize, Freddy Peralta, Luis Castillo, Foster Griffin, Dustin May, Tyler Mahle, José Soriano, Spencer Arrighetti, Jameson Taillon, Kris Bubic, Braxton Garrett, Dean Kremer, and Connelly Early.

The Phillies got none of them.

OK, so they weren’t trading for Skubal. And given the lack of top-end talent in the farm system, Dombrowski conceded the Phillies were unable to beat the returns for some starters. The Cubs (Gausman and Holmes) and Padres (Ray and Mize) were especially aggressive with their prospect packages.

But Dombrowski also said the Phillies discussed, then dismissed pitchers whom they didn’t view as upgrades over rookie Andrew Painter.

“The choice came in, do you end up getting a guy that’s a fifth starter that you don’t think is as good as your guy that you have now and option the guy that you think has a better chance to win to help your depth, or do what we’re doing?” Dombrowski said. “And we figured we’d do what we were doing and help our bullpen.”

It’s riskier than the infield realignment. Much riskier.

Unlike the Cubs and Padres, the Phillies didn’t need to trade for pitchers who could start postseason games for them. Not as long as Cristopher Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, and Jesús Luzardo are lined up. But they still have to get to the postseason, which is more difficult with a 5-23 record from the fifth-starter spot.

The Reds held Brady Singer, even though the return likely didn’t have had to be much greater than the value of the compensatory draft pick they will get if they give him a qualifying offer. Adding someone like Singer to slot behind Aaron Nola, with Painter in reserve, would’ve helped, a point that was reinforced Wednesday when Painter tweaked his left hamstring and exited after four innings.

Painter is expected to make his next start, Mattingly said, but surely, the Phillies were holding their breath. They won’t exhale much over the next seven weeks.

“I always worry after you get past the trade deadline,” Dombrowski said. “I worry about our depth everywhere if you have injuries.”

But the state of the rotation feels like an especially dangerous game.

Watch the latest episode

In trading for Luis Arraez at the deadline, the Phillies displaced three-fourths of their infield but left Trea Turner at shortstop. To help make sense of it all, pennant-winning former shortstop and current radio broadcaster Kevin Stocker joined Phillies Extra, The Inquirer's baseball podcast. Watch here.

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