When Daniel Murphy reported to his first minor league team, a coach asked him what position he plays. Murphy’s reply was, “Hitter.” He wasn’t kidding.
Murphy came up to the Mets in 2008 and played left field. He worked hard on adjusting to left field on the major league level even though he appeared in three games in the outfield in the minors, and actually wasn’t too bad earning a -1.6 dWAR from Fangraphs for 49 games. That he appeared 256 minor league games on the infield – almost 200 of them at 3B – was of no matter to the Mets. He was a left fielder. So, “Hitter” Daniel Murphy did his job hitting .313/.397/.473 with a 130 OPS+ in 151 plate appearances. The Mets were buoyed by this and gave him the job full time in 2009. But, no… Murphy had a few adventures in the outfield early in the year, so they moved him to first base for his last 101 games. This was his worst year as a Met hitting only .266/.313/.427 with a OPS+ of 96.
In 2010, Murphy suffered a sprained knee during a rundown in the second to last spring training game against the Cardinals and was out for two months. Then, as Ike Davis got off to a good start as the first baseman, the Mets had Murphy playing second base during his rehab. A dirty slide by Syracuse’s Leonard Davis on a double play tore the MCL knee ligament for the rehabbing Buffalo player and now Murphy was out for the season.
From 2011-2014, Murphy played mostly second base, averaged 594 plate appearances, 36 doubles, 3 triples, 8 home runs, a batting line of .294/.333/.414 and a 111 OPS+. Too, in 2014 he made his first all-star team! But, those 8 home runs a year from a player that calls himself “Hitter” were not impressing. Neither was Murphy’s penchant of just looking to put the bat on the ball without a plan, and too often just flicking the ball to left field even ahead in the count. To best illustrate this, from 2011-2014, Murphy’s OPPO% was 27.4%, 29.0%, 34.3%, and 32.8%, respectively. Too, his hard hit rate during those years was 25.4%, 23.5% (way less than Gimenez’s 28% last year), 31.3%, and 28.7%.
Following the 2014 season, the new Mets batting instructor, Kevin Long, started working with Murphy to change his approach from just merely looking to make contact to looking to make hard contact. From 2015-2017, Murphy’s OPPO% was 28.1%, 25.7%, and 24.6%, and the hard hit rates: 31.0%, 38.2%, and 35.7%, respectively. It was ironic that Sandy Alderson said Kevin Long was their best free agent acquisition in the winter of 2014 when they signed him away from the Yankees at Curtis Granderson’s urging, however, Alderson didn’t invest in the player Long helped the most. So, following Murphy’s 2015 season and the post season heroics that we all remember rather fondly, the Mets didn’t even make him a single offer. Offering the Qualifying Offer and being happy to just wait for the first round pick when Murphy signed somewhere else, the Mets even traded for Neil Walker before Murphy signed with another team.
While some fans still argue that a one-year offer of $15.8Million is not an insult per se, no one was accepting Qualifying Offers back then. Alderson has even said several times that the one player transaction he regrets the most in his entire baseball career was letting Murphy leave – and this from an executive that signed Sean Marcum, Frank Francisco and Jon Rauch, and waived Justin Turner!
The clues were there for the Mets to see. In his first 77 plate appearances in 2015, Murphy struggled to implement his new approach having a .174/.247/.333 batting line. But things started to turn, and slowly Murphy became more comfortable and even a DL stint with a sore quad couldn’t contain him. In 103 starts for the final five months of the regular season, his batting line was .298/.334/.467 with 33 doubles and 12 home runs. Not great, but the pace was 49 and 18, respectively and that was pretty good.
Nonetheless, Murphy’s improvements were not erasing years of less than acceptable defense or base running mistakes that prompted the Mets play-by-play announcer – who was paid by the owner and had to sell ownership’s point of view – to call him a “net negative” player during a broadcast. To be fair to Gary Cohen, even David Wright joked one time that Murphy runs the bases sometimes “like he thinks he’s invisible.” Did that hurt? Murphy had this to say in a SNY interview last week on January 29th: “I would get some base hits and then I’d run the bases like I was invisible,” so you know that it hurt coming from his best friend on the team and someone he still talks so fondly of.
It seems that the writing was on the wall all along. The Mets weren’t too impressed with Murphy, but rumor had it the Nationals were keeping an eye on him. In a late season game while playing first base, Murphy went over the railing into the Washington dugout to catch a popup. Three Nationals, including the manager Matt Williams, caught Murphy so he wouldn’t hurt himself. After the game, Williams professed how they admired the way “Murph” played the game. Again, no one on the Mets was listening.
After wallowing in the free agent market waiting for the Mets to care (after signing with the Nationals when asked about the Mets, Murphy’s response was: “I’ve enjoyed my time with the Mets. I love them”), he signed a very modest 3/$37.5Million deal after his agent give the Mets a last courtesy call. The Mets wished him well.
Murphy appreciated the well wishes and the new found swing to the tune of .347/.390/.595, an OPS+ of 155, an all-star berth, and second in the NL MVP race the next year. Too, he destroyed the Mets whenever he played them. To put our paranoia in perspective, Murphy’s numbers for 2016 against the Mets were .413/.444/.773 with seven home runs and 21 RBI, and I was surprised during the research that it was only 21 RBI because it seemed like at least double that! He killed the Mets so that when he came to the plate every Mets fan just hoped whatever damage was coming, it wouldn’t be too bad.
Following the 2017 season, Murphy had arthroscopic microfracture surgery on his right knee. It was to be routine and Murphy was to be back early in the next season. Instead, he missed 63 games and came back on June 12, 2018. Murphy had a nice 56 games and 205 plate appearances to the tune of .300/.341/.442 and Nationals GM Mike Rizzo cashed in his fortunate signing in a trade to the Cubs for the last 35 games of Murphy’s contract. [The A+ infielder that Washington received, Andruw Monasterio, was then sent onto Cleveland in the offseason for Yan Gomes.] Murphy continued to perform, giving the Cubs .297/.329/.471 batting line in 146 plate appearances. This led to his signing with the Rockies for 2/$18MM with a $6MM buyout after 2018, but Murphy’s knee just kept getting worse and his two-season line for Colorado was merely .269/.316/.426. Murphy was bought out following the 2020 season and he hung up his spikes at 35 years of age.
Murphy had a nice career with memorable moments, but the Nationals got the crème of it and that’s a shame. Murphy leaves as a player that got the most out of himself and probably could be a great hitting coach. In an interview late in his career, Murphy had this to say: “Long after they tell me I’m not good enough to play professional baseball anymore, I’ll be a father. And I’ll be a husband.” We love you Murph, and we are sorry you had to teach us a lesson that very few players are perfect and we need to see the positives in our players too. Once more the Mets and their fans wish Murphy well on his next endeavor under more pleasant circumstances.
I wrote an article on Murphy (the first one on the left in the related section above) following the 2014 season and Gus had this reply:
“I now feel that Murphy should be here when (if) this team becomes a winner. But, are we willing to make him a Ben Zobrist type playing everywhere on the infield and is our manger savvy enough to make it work?
I will miss him, but I understand that he cannot fully be appreciated here. If the Yankees had half a brain, he would have replaced Cano and hit third for them. I hope he goes to Boston and is a 5 WAR player.”
Wow, I just read your article and the similarities are scary. There are 40 comments, mostly positive, but all entertaining being 6+ years later.
Murphy may have had some adventures on the basepaths, but he also had the most important SB in Mets history. In the decisive NLDS game 5 in 2015 Murphy was on first base when the batter behind him, a lefty, drew a walk. The Dodgers had shifted, and Murphy noticed they were in no hurry to get back to regular positions. So as he trotted down to second, he turned on the jets and raced to third, just ahead of Corey Seager. Murphy then scored on a sac fly. The Mets won the game 3-2, Murphy also had an RBI as well as a solo homer, so he accounted for all the Met runs.
Such a heads-up play. It helped them win that game, and the series. The batter was Lucas Duda with one of his “clutch walks”, as Keith Hernandez used to say, LOL!
If you watch the replays of Flores’ post-tears walk-off, the jubilance of DM for his teammate is what I remember most. It’s one reason I still look at the back of the shirt too.
Like everyone else, I was stunned by the way Murphy destroyed LAD and the Cubs in the 2015 NLDS and NLCS. But the way he completely disintegrated against the Royals made me think that it wouldn’t be greatest loss if he walked, provided they held Cespedes.
And then when he accepted the offer from the Nats at $6M less per year than the Mets QO, I started thinking that he actually didn’t want to be in NYC.
José