Trea Turner is a smart man.

Knowing a full day was spent in the city talking about how fans should give him a standing ovation as a show of support, and not knowing that there was considerable debate on this topic on social media, but having an inkling that the world of TwiXter (It’s what I’ve decided to call Elon’s toy, and I think it’s appropriate as we can steal the “Pick a Side” phrase from the great left Twix vs. right Twix ad campaign) was likely exploding with Molotov cocktails of text and hardly any actual discourse, Turner strode over to the gathered media throng who wanted to know what he thought of the whole thing. He proceeded to drop an answer that he knew would endear him to the city of Philadelphia and buy him a lot more time to get his game right:

(Note to self. Next time, check to see if that pink and blue button down needs ironing before wearing it out in public.)

So, it’s not to the level of Chase Utley saying, “World Fucking Champions.” Nor is it Alec Bohm a little over a year ago owning up to saying, “I hate this fucking place,” but in the pantheon of Philadelphia athletes dropping the F bomb, it has the potential to win a bronze medal. Because if Turner somehow turns his season around and propels the Phillies on another magical October run, then by Gawd, this soundbite will go down in Philly sports lore.

And Turner doubled down on his love of the city of Philadelphia when he talked about his mom:


He even took to Instagram to thank the Philadelphia fans for their love:

That’s a pretty amazing way to go after going 1-for-4 and seeing your team lose 7-5 to the second-worst squad in baseball.

I mean, who cares that Aaron Nola was terrible for a second straight start against bad teams? Who cares that the bullpen continues to be leaky after nearly four months of being nearly impenetrable? Who cares that Kyle Schwarber is batting .085 in his last 15 games? Who cares that the Phillies, once again, were 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position, with 11 of those at bats coming against Jordan Lyles and his 6.24 ERA?

Why should any of that matter when fans banded together to do something so positive and convince themselves that it led to such a massive RBI single by Turner?

I think it falls somewhere between “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and “I am not a crook,” Mike.

Look, I know this was a whole thing yesterday and it turned into a WIP vs. Crossing Broad on TwiXter with Kyle Pagan fighting with anyone and everyone with a 94 tattoo on their profile. (And frankly, if 97.5 wasn’t a directionless ship, they would have run counterprogramming to this argument and possibly picked up some new listeners, but hey, why follow any marketing 101 strategies when you can just exist and do nothing else?) But the reality is, none of this matters.

It was a coordinated campaign by some at WIP to make itself look good (and frankly, aside from Jack Fritz who along with the Philly Captain spearheaded the idea, no one else should have gloated about it) by feeding off the insecure segment of the fan base that truly believes the national media keeps them down (which, if I’m doing a rough demographic layout off the top of my head is probably about 45% from the Northeast, 45% from Delco and the remaining 10% scattered through the rest of the Metropolitan area).

Some sheeples went along with it, which still proves that there is a small segment of the fanbase that, sadly, can’t decide independently how to feel about sports by themselves. This is only made worse by the segment of the fan base who criticize and hate everything and either infect our social media feeds with their negativity or call into every radio show every day to make the same, tired arguments and get me (and many like me) to turn it off so I don’t have to listen to their unentertaining and uninformed drivel, because they’re not the people I’m tuning in to listen to in the first place.

And it wasn’t everyone. Good on WIP morning show member Devan Kaney for providing proof that this wasn’t some full-on thing that an entire stadium got behind like they were singing “Wild Thing” for Rick Vaughn entering the game.

https://twitter.com/Devan_Kaney/status/1687609911268495361?s=20

(Although her later tweet with the whole ketchup on a hot dog thing brought her average TwiXter score down for the night to a five on a scale of 1-10.)

But the reality is, this isn’t curing Turner. Even if he does start hitting like he has in his entire career, this won’t be the reason. Turner needs to be more consistent, or the Phillies won’t accomplish their goals. But, so do about eight other players. When are the standing ovations coming for Nola, Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, Ranger Suarez, Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos, Yunior Marte, Jeff Hoffman, Gregory Soto, and Matt Strahm?

Maybe fans should just stand and applaud the whole game and start doing chants and coordinated dances in their seats like European soccer fans.

Behind all this window dressing are these facts:

  • Schwarber, Harper, Castellanos, Realmuto and Turner, the guys President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski called his “big five,” were 2-for-20 against Kansas City pitching. Yes, one of the two hits was a homer by Castellanos, who seems to be getting past his prolonged July slump in the last four games (.294/.333/.647 with a .980 OPS and two homers), but this is not going to help the team win.
  • Turner had the other hit, but the other three at bats resulted in a line out, with a runner in scoring position (runner didn’t advance), a popout with two runners on base (runners didn’t advance) and grounding into a fielder’s choice with a runner on base (runner was out). Those are all unproductive outs.
  • Nola, who despite his inconsistency this season would at least give the Phillies length in his starts and keep them in games, suddenly can’t even get through six innings against the Pirates and Royals. Which, if it happens again against the Nationals next week should set off every alarm bell in Citizens Bank Park.
  • Marte has now allowed multiple baserunners in four of his 10 post-All Star game appearances and has given up runs in three of them.
  • Hoffman, who has been mostly good for the Phillies, has had two shoddy appearances in a row.
  • Brandon Marsh should have caught a ball that resulted in a triple in the eighth inning but was so convinced that it was foul that he implored manager Rob Thomson to challenge it, and the ball was fair by three feet. The run would score, giving the Royals insurance.

So, if we stay focused on baseball, and not theatrics, we’d see that this is a loss that can’t happen for the Phillies. You need to sweep teams like Kansas City. By losing this one, it makes your playoff push at least one day longer than it needs to be, and if you’re a fan, rather than worrying if you should stand and clap, sit and boo, or choose to be Switzerland and just do nothing and watch the game, it would be nice for you if the Phillies just win the games they are supposed to win for a change, and stop losing to the Clevelands, Pittsburghs and Kansas Citys of the world.

If they did that, that would be pretty fucking cool for you.