Phillies 2023 MVP: Ranking the top 5 Most Valuable Phillies position players

No. 2: Trea Turner, 3.8 fWAR

It's been well-documented by now how poorly Trea Turner's Phillies career started, how incredible he ended up being down the stretch, and the general roller coaster of a first season he had in Philadelphia overall.

The fact that the $300 million shortstop managed to finish with a 3.8 WAR is an impressive feat in itself. It's not the 6.4 WAR he had in 2022 or the 6.9 WAR he had in 2021, but Turner finished the year on such a heater that he turned things around both in the stats and in fans' minds.

By the end of July, the 30-year-old had accumulated just 1.0 WAR, primarily buoyed by his phenomenal base running metrics (it certainly wasn't his offense). At that point in the season, he had 5.1 BsR with 21 stolen bases. Both numbers were the best on the team.

As for his bat, up to the end of July, he had a -6.2 offensive rating on FanGraphs and was hitting .242 with a .637 OPS and a 24 percent strikeout rate — yikes! Outside of his 27-game debut season, Turner had never posted a season strikeout rate above 19.9 percent.

But, after the now-famous standing ovation from the Phillies faithful, Turner kicked his season into gear and finished with the highest WAR (2.8) on the team over the final two months of the campaign, proving his value to the club.

He dropped his strikeout rate down to a more Turner-like 17 percent and absolutely raked at the plate. He hit .317 with a 1.000 OPS and launched 16 home runs, drove in 42, and scored 44 while swiping nine more bags in 51 games.

He propelled the Phillies into the top Wild Card spot, taking them from a 58-49 record on Aug. 1 to a 90-72 mark by season's end. Over that stretch, they grew their slim 0.5 lead in the Wild Card to 6.0 games.