Trea Turner is feeling confident defensively. His ‘unbelievable’ sliding play can attest to it.

As much as Trea Turner has been locked in at the plate, he also feels like he’s been locked in defensively lately.

Two weeks ago, Turner booted a routine grounder against the Brewers, which ultimately cost the Phillies the game. But he hasn’t made an error in the 10 games since and made several athletic grabs against the Blue Jays on Friday.

That included a sliding, backhand stop on the edge of the outfield grass. Turner used his momentum to spin and fire a strike to first base to beat the runner.

“That one play was unbelievable,” said manager Rob Thomson.

Turner is having his best defensive season since arriving in Philadelphia, according to Statcast metrics. His fielding run value (1) and outs above average (1), are about average for major league shortstops, a marked improvement from his numbers in 2023 and 2024.

Though the missteps have become less frequent, when they come in big moments — like with the tying run on third base, as was the case against Milwaukee — they stand out more.

“I feel like I’ve played good all year, for the most part,” Turner said. “Obviously, there’s a couple errors that are going to happen here and there, and you try to limit those as much as possible. But as far as defense for the season, I feel like it’s been really good, and just trying to continue doing what I’m doing and see where it ends up at the end of the year.”

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Turner thinks that when he a teammate can pull off a big stop in the field, that can give the team as much momentum as a clutch hit.

“When you hit balls hard and the other team’s diving all over their place, you just feel a little defeated in the dugout,” Turner said. “And I think it’s not even when you’re hitting, you see your teammates going through that too. And so it just feels like there’s no holes out there. And so when we can do that on our side and get those outs for the pitchers and kind of keep them at bay, I think it’s big for them.”

With Bryce Harper on the injured list with right wrist irritation, Otto Kemp has been seeing time at first base. He committed an error on Friday, when he was overaggressive on a grounder hit to the right side of the infield. He fielded it but couldn’t make the throw in time.

“He’s looked comfortable,” Thomson said. “He went after that ball [Friday]. That’s probably [Bryson] Stott’s ball. But you see a lot of first basemen do that. They get out of their area. But he’s looked very comfortable.”

Kyle Schwarber continues to get work at first base, though he hasn’t appeared there in a regular season game this year. Thomson said Schwarber likely will see time in left field soon to allow Nick Castellanos to DH for a day and get some time off his feet.

Taijuan Walker warmed up in the bullpen Friday night in the eighth inning with the Phillies leading Toronto, 5-0. By the time the ninth inning rolled around, the lead had grown to 8-0.

Thomson envisioned using Walker in leverage situations, and an eight-run lead certainly doesn’t fit that bill. But he also wants to be cautious with Walker warming up and cooling down, since he wasn’t used to that as a starter. So instead of putting Walker back down and bringing in a low-leverage arm, he still came out for the ninth.

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Walker, who pitched a scoreless inning, topped out at 94.2 mph with his four-seamer, an uptick from his season average of 92.4 mph. That was exactly what Thomson has hoped to see from him, now that Walker is pitching in shorter bursts as a reliever.

“Maybe there’s a little bit more in there,” Thomson said. “I don’t know, but it certainly ticked up. His stuff was good.”

Phillies prospect Justin Crawford, who has missed seven games for triple-A Lehigh Valley with a quad injury, was back in the IronPigs lineup on Saturday. … Zack Wheeler (6-2, 2.85 ERA) is scheduled to start against Toronto’s José Berríos (2-2, 3.38) in Sunday’s series finale.