Nats ready for ups and downs of Turner's first season at short

JUPITER, Fla. - Chris Speier was, by all accounts, a good shortstop during a career that spanned 19 seasons, the majority of those with the Giants and Expos. But ask the Nationals bench coach and infield instructor about his rookie season in 1971, and he immediately shudders.

"Thirty-one errors?" he asked.

Actually, Speier had 33.

"It should've been about 50," he said. "I had (Willie) McCovey at first base."

Speier learned what so many young shortstops learn: No matter how talented you are, you're probably going to commit a lot of errors. It gets better with time and experience. Sure enough, Speier was charged with only 20 errors in 1972, and by 1975 he had reduced the total to 12.

It's just something baseball folks accept when it comes to young shortstops.

"Yeah, he's going to make mistakes. Of course," Speier said. "Very rare do you get that guy that comes up when they're 20, 21 and they're able to not make that many errors. ... So, yeah, it takes time. We expect that there's going to be errors made. Now what we try to do is make sure they happen usually when trying to make a great play. We really try to clean up the consistently routine plays."

And that will be the biggest challenge for Trea Turner this season. He's not a rookie, but he is essentially a rookie shortstop after spending the bulk of his big league time last year in center field.

Turner is a natural shortstop; he grew up playing the position, was drafted by the Padres as a shortstop and played most of his games in the Nationals farm system there. So this isn't some new experiment. But it nonetheless will be a point of focus all spring and all season, because of the importance of the position and the effect (positive or negative) a shortstop can have on his team's overall fortunes.

"As a shortstop, man, you're in the center of everything," manager Dusty Baker said. "And Trea's looking forward to it."

Turner indeed is excited about the opportunity he got when the Nationals traded Danny Espinosa to the Angels in December, opening the position for him. He also fully recognizes he is not Espinosa in the field. He doesn't have a comparable arm (though few do) and he doesn't have comparable experience at this level.

Turner doesn't stress over any of that, though. His focus is on the absolute basics.

"Catch the ball, throw the ball and make sure the first baseman catches it," he said earlier this spring. "If I'm a little slower and the guy beats the ball out, I still completed it and I go from there. I need to speed it up a little bit, but I gave myself a shot and gave my team a shot. And that's something I learned in college: Catch the ball, throw the ball and complete the play. And guys do it differently, and I'll probably do it differently. I don't care how it looks, as long as he's out."

Speier concurs, emphasizing the importance for Turner right now to devote his time and energy to perfecting the routine play, not the play that's going to show up on TV the next morning.

"The main thing is to make sure you make the consistent play 99.9 percent of the time," Speier said. "That's what we want. The spectacular things - range, all that stuff - he has, but we're not interested in that right now."

It was perhaps discouraging to some that Turner's very first chance in the field in a Grapefruit League game this spring resulted in an error. He fielded Jose Reyes' leadoff grounder Friday afternoon in Port St. Lucie and then threw high to first base.

The Nationals, though, viewed it as a perfect learning experience for Turner, one that doesn't cost the team at all. Next time he fields a grounder from a fast runner like Reyes, perhaps he won't rush to make the throw.

"Most of the errors are careless errors or mental ones. Most of them aren't physical errors," Baker said. "(Friday) was because he threw the ball high. And if there's a different runner other than Reyes, then he don't make an error. What you don't want is a reputation that if you hit it to this guy, you run hard. You want the reputation of it being a courtesy trot down there, because you know I'm out if he catches it. But it's going to take time to get that reputation."

Speier didn't worry about Turner's first error, so long as it didn't lead to a second error.

"Those things are going to happen," he said. "What are you going to say? All right, move on. And what's good is, you learn about the character of an infielder. OK, I've made an error. Now, what do you do on the next ball? Is it starting to bother you a little bit? Is it starting to play head games? And that's not a problem with Trea."