On the surface, Daniel Murphy has made some great strides this season towards establishing himself as one of the top second basemen in Major League Baseball.
After Sunday’s loss to the Marlins, Murphy sported a .291/.323/.441 slash line and ranked sixth or better amongst second basemen in Major League Baseball in batting average (6th), slugging percentage (6th), fWAR (1.7, 5th), and surprisingly UZR (3.1, 4th).
Murphy’s game, however has a flaw that unless fixed, will prevent him from joining the ranks of the truly elite hitters at second base like Brandon Phillips, Robinson Cano, and Dustin Pedroia: his walk rate is alarmingly low.
The problem is not only that it’s low, but that it’s taken a significant dip this season, from 5.9% last season to a career low 4.0% through 54 games played this season.
Murphy’s Isolated On Base (OBI, calculated by OBP-BA) is second lowest amongst the 20 qualifying second basemen in the majors, better than only Jeff Keppinger.[1][2]
| Name | AVG | OBP | OBI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dustin Pedroia | .333 | .416 | .083 |
| Ian Kinsler | .302 | .369 | .067 |
| Robinson Cano | .291 | .347 | .056 |
| Matt Carpenter | .309 | .392 | .083 |
| Marco Scutaro | .335 | .387 | .052 |
| Brandon Phillips | .296 | .347 | .051 |
| Chase Utley | .272 | .339 | .067 |
| Neil Walker | .267 | .364 | .097 |
| Daniel Murphy | .298 | .330 | .032 |
| Jedd Gyorko | .276 | .338 | .062 |
| Howie Kendrick | .294 | .335 | .041 |
| Jason Kipnis | .243 | .311 | .068 |
| Omar Infante | .294 | .332 | .038 |
| Ben Zobrist | .253 | .348 | .095 |
| Jose Altuve | .299 | .339 | .040 |
| Dan Uggla | .180 | .300 | .120 |
| Martin Prado | .260 | .309 | .049 |
| Rickie Weeks | .182 | .284 | .102 |
| Brian Dozier | .217 | .265 | .048 |
| Jeff Keppinger | .231 | .237 | .006 |
One potential explanation for this is Murphy’s aggressiveness on balls outside of the strike zone. He ranks 5th amongst qualified second basemen with a 32.2 O-Swing%, and 9th with a 75.5 O-Contact%.
That means that Murphy is just about middle of the pack when it comes to making contact with pitches out of the strike zone, but swings at a greater percentage of balls than others. This leads to a higher percentage of balls becoming strikes, and a lack of deep counts being worked.
Murphy is also very aggressive on pitches in the strike zone, swinging at 65% of strikes, and makes contact with 92.9% of those pitches.
The combination of swinging at a lot of balls, and aggressiveness in the strike zone seems to help to explain some of Murphy’s perennial on-base difficulties.
While he is a doubles machine, he doesn’t hit for enough additional power to make up for the lack of walks, resulting in an unspectacular .764 OPS despite a good batting average and decent slugging percentage.
Equally as troubling as the declining walk rate, has been Murphy’s increasing strikeout rate. In his injury-shortened 2011 season, he struck out 9.9% of the time. This season he has struck out in 14.2% of his plate appearances, up a bit from 13.5% last season.
While he is still well below the league average strikeout rate, obviously this is not good. The more he strikes out, the less he is putting the ball in play. Since Murphy has sustained a BABIP of .335 over the past three seasons, the spike in his strikeout rate has robbed him of 2 percentage points off his batting average last season, and 5 points this season.
Unless Murphy can get back to drawing more walks like he did earlier in his career – he posted a 6.8 BB% in his first full year in 2009 – and limiting the strikeouts, he will never really be able to make the next step and become a top tier second baseman.
Joe Vasile is a play-by-play announcer and radio host. You can check his website out here.
Despite his shortcomings, I’m still happy with what he’s done to make a career for himself. I doubt he’ll ever get to that next tier, and I doubt even more he’ll ever break a 6% walk rate, but hey, we’ll take it. If we could get that kind of production at every position on the diamond, we’d be the best or close to the best hitting team in the game.
I agree. Murphy certainly produces enough to justify a starting spot on a roster, but unless he can improve upon his walk rate (or even hit for a little more power), he won’t be a top tier second baseman on the level of a Brandon Phillips, which some think he can still turn into.
Contrary to popular belief, Brandon Phillips is not that great of a hitter. He’s had one great season in 2011 and he’s currently smacking the ball right now, but he’s been just about average for the other 6 years. What elevates him to the top tier of 2nd basemen though is his defense.
From a pure hitting perspective, Cano/Pedrioa are in a league of their own. You can toss Utley in that gruop when he’s healthy.
Then there are a lot of 2nd tier guys like Kinsler, Walker, Kipnis and I think Murphy belongs in this group.
Then there are 3rd tier guys like Phillips, Kendrick, Infante, Scutaro, Altuve.
Finally you have past their prime guys like Weeks and Uggla.
*note* the above list was all HITTING and doesn’t take into account baserunning/fielding.
What a difference a year makes. I went to 1 game at CitiField in 2011, which happened to be Aug 7…the day Murph was taken out on a play at 2B that ended his year. The number of comments during 2011 about his substantially substandard glove made him the target for high ridicule, much like Ike, if we recall. There was a serious question if Murph lacked the skills to play 2B without being maimed. Last year, with the help of Tuff, Murph played a clean, reasonably well positioned 2B that approached MLB competence. Ive never seen someone play in short right so much but, he began to make the position his. Along comes 2013. After a winter dedicated to getting his swing in order Murph has looked pretty awesome in the box, and on the diamond. He plays almost on the dirt now pretty regularly. He looks comfortable turning two. Few of us dread a stinger hit to the right side. I think Murph has been the model for being assigned a position and making it his own. I cringe when I hear about moving him to 1B, his natural position. He’s a second baseman and should not be moved in any circumstance. Im prepared to let Murph continue to grow into 2B without worrying about him chasing “Dat Dude” or Cano among the elite at the position (fielding and hitting). I think in a little more than a year, he has worked pretty much a miracle considering where he came from. That he is even mentioned amongst this group should be an indicator about his exemplary commitment.
Teufel has done wonders for Murphy’s game at second base. His overall improvement, with both the bat and glove, has been very encouraging, and he has quietly turned himself into a very good player.
I’m very satisfied and pleased with Murphy’s play…. his improvement from last year shows what kind of ballplayer he is..I think he ‘ll only get better..
The improvement that he’s shown this year, especially in the field, has been very encouraging, but this is probably the most we can expect to get out of Murphy. That being said, a 3-4 WAR second baseman is a nice luxury that most teams don’t have.
[…] at Mets360 (a great site, check it out), author Joe Vasile argues that Daniel Murphy’s game “has a flaw” which makes his performance not as great […]
It seems that no matter what Murph does, he has his detractors.
In spite of the statistics on steroids world, I still believe morale matters. He is a team guy who competes hard, sets a good example, and is a team player.
It is his intangible that should be added to what amounts to an All Star season.
Based off all the comments here, I should’ve included that Murphy’s current level of production makes him a 3-4 WAR player at second base, which is something that is a great luxury to have especially if the team expects to contend within the next two years.
I don’t know if Murph is an All Star, but I know he’s one guy in the Mets’ lineup I actually look forward to seeing bat. He’s also done alright in the field. There are still some times when he looks ungainly or even a little confused on defense, but I’ve also seen Murphy make some outstanding plays. If you made a list of all the Mets players based on the level of doubt and anxiety they cause, with the worst at the top, Daniel Murphy would be way down at the bottom somewhere.
Why knock him for being aggressive…. top tier second basemen don’t grow on trees so why not be happy with what we have which is probably the best second tier guy at the position. He is an amazing hitter, always hits the gaps and is a flat out doubles machine. On a good team he would be extremely valuable and be in the top 10 runs scored. On the defensive side he was already good before this year, everyone just denies to accept that fact for some reason… it took him a couple of years but by 2012 he completely controlled the position. Why waste your time wishing we had robinson cano and be excited that we have Daniel Murphy…. If it werent for Phillips’ great year i honestly think he should be the starting second baseman at the all star game.