Walker Buehler deletes savage response to Brewers’ Justin Turner interest

Yes, we understand why Dodgers ace Walker Buehler deleted his savage subtweet intended for the Brewers after Justin Turner’s return became official.

But we don’t have to like it. Keep that tweet up! Keep that energy bubbling!

Also, can it really be a subtweet if it mentions its intended target by name?

We digress.

Turner came home to roost on Saturday night — and announced the deal himself — for two years and $34 million, but that’s just the base.

If all the contract’s escalators are hit, Turner could bank $52 million in three years if he ranks in a certain echelon for MVP voting and has his option picked up. Regardless, it’s the largest guarantee to a player aged 36 or older since Victor Martinez’s deal with Detroit in 2014. These are certainly rich waters.

Waters which the Brewers appeared all too happy to swim in. Whether you believed Turner would spurn Los Angeles or not, Milwaukee certainly didn’t trail far behind. The Crew reportedly offered the exact same $34 million worth of guarantees over two years, and were willing to guarantee a third as long as the AAVs got morphed and minimized.

Not bad at all! Factoring in the tax, Turner could’ve even banked more cash in the two-year guaranteed period of his deal in Milwaukee.

Of course…he was never going to spend the final years of his MLB career in a semi-rebuild, was he?

That’s why the Dodgers were so confident all along in the conversations. That’s why even the Mets were flecked aside like a pesky gnat.

And that’s why stars like Buehler felt safe to laugh out loud at the Brewers in the wake of Turner’s announcement, even though the sentiments were eventually deleted.

Yes, this Dodgers team talks smack.

Yes, they also back it up.

There’s possibly a little projection involved here, but it would seem that at no point in this process was Buehler concerned that Milwaukee’s offer could ultimately trump Andrew Friedman’s.

Of course, the Dodgers players likely knew more about the ins and outs of the negotiation than your average layman. Turner meant a lot to them as their de facto captain these past few years, which factored into the ill-advised decision to sneak him back onto the field for the World Series celebration he’d worked so hard to attain.

Something tells us the players always knew he would return and attempt to run it back, even as the tenor of these negotiations turned dramatic publicly.

Professional sports are always better when the haves are willing to publicly taunt the have-nots. We understand Buehler opting out of the firestorm his tweet caused, but we do love the bravado. After all, the Dodgers won another one on Saturday.

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