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Daniel Murphy, Making a Travesty of This Whole Playoff Thing

Edgy MD

By Edgy MD
in New York Mets Talk

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Edgy MD FCL Mets

Edgy MD

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Personally, I think folks are going to stop throwing him the curveball on the inside part of the plate starting right now. He's developed a great sense of when that baby is coming and his frequent interviews with the umps have really solidified his awareness of that part of the strike zone.

But this guy deserves his own thread right now. And you deserve to post in it. Use this thread for your Daniel Murphy observations, hyperboles, anagrams, links to profiles of the dude, and pictures, descriptions and accounts of him and his playoff beard.


Ceetar Prep Ball

Ceetar

Grand Central Contributor
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they should probably throw him more sliders as he hasn't hit one in the postseason yet, but maybe that's just because they haven't given him a hittable one.

they're working him almost exclusively away.



Guest El Segundo Escupidor

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Ceetar wrote:
......

It's okay, the Cubs know exactly where to pitch to Daniel Murphy.



Guest d'Kong76

Guest d'Kong76

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They'll be here all week folks, don't forget your bartenders and waitresses....


dgwphotography Prep Ball

dgwphotography

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Farmer Ted wrote:
It was like listening to Crash Davis.

http://m.mlb.com/nym/video/topic/94788780/v524351583/nlcs-gm2-murphy-discusses-1stinning-homer-win/?c_id=nym


I love listening to him after every game. It's great how he heaps praise on his teammates, and I loved how he said he was undressed in his third at bat...


Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket

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We've all experienced the ups and downs of Muffy over the years but none of us have ever seen him this hot. So exciting!

He's just on another planet right now.

I myself am guilty of having called for the the Mets to give up on him I don't know how many times, but will always salute how Metly he's become. I mean, the guy is A Met.


batmagadanleadoff College Ball

batmagadanleadoff

Old-Timey Member
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Daniel Murphy is an exploding supernova, dropped into the heart of an =#FFFF00]erupting volcano, plowing through a bowl of hallucinogenic chili.

[fimg=444]https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/espn-grantland/img/grantland-logo@2x.png[/fimg]

Daniel Murphy Wants It More

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/daniel-murphy-wants-it-more/

excerpt:

Through subtle improvements in his hitting approach, he has reached the peak of his baseball career. And through the wonders of small sample size and the kind of playoff weirdness we see every year, he�s making himself into an unlikely legend.

[***]

Oh, but there�s more to say about the struck-by-lightning odds that Murphy has overcome to turn into Roy Freaking Hobbs. So much more.

Murphy is just the fifth player in history to homer in four straight games within a single postseason.1 He�s also the first Met to hit five homers in a single postseason.2 In fact, with just seven playoff games under his belt, Murphy has already tied for the all-time lead for postseason homers by a Met, matching Mike Piazza with five. And among all the players in baseball history, only two blasted more home runs in their first seven career playoff games: Ken Griffey Jr. and Carlos Beltran.


This article needs some updating.

And then this:

As Baseball Savant proprietor Daren Willman noted, of the 38,775 homers hit since 2008,3 only 20 have come on pitches as low as the one Murphy golfed off his shoetops [against Jake Arrieta].


batmagadanleadoff College Ball

batmagadanleadoff

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JABO: The Making of Postseason Legend Daniel Murphy

by Owen Watson - October 19, 2015

We watch playoff baseball in part to see the stars of the game write their legacies. Whether they become legends or eventual disappointments, the October stage grants them a chance to produce the alluring commodity we most crave in this wild month of baseball: narrative.

We know the names. Reggie Jackson; Kirk Gibson; Carlton Fisk. We can see their postseason highlight reels in our heads just by reading the words on the page; we know the accompanying commentator clips so well that the audio plays along with them. They�re more than legends � they�re woven into a historic fabric, embedded in our consciousness as touchstones for the game�s future.

Somewhere in our minds, amid the grocery lists and afternoon meeting agendas, Gibson is pumping his fist as he rounds the bases. Fisk is waving it fair. And a Yankee Stadium crowd is yelling �Reggie. Reggie. Reggie.� They�re all there, because they�re now part of who we are as a collective baseball mind.

And so we come to Daniel Murphy, who�s not yet one of those household names. An important part of the Mets during the past few years, yes, but never what anyone would call a superstar. Only now, after fueling another Mets win in the NLCS over the Chicago Cubs by homering in his fourth consecutive game, he�s becoming something else � a one-man show, a phenomenon, a postseason hero in the making.

This is happening because most professional baseball players are capable of doing extraordinary things for short periods of time. The greatest among them are able to stretch those periods, shortening the downtime between each episode. However, sometimes we need to recognize when someone�s performance is not just a hot streak; oftentimes there have been legitimate improvements made, and those coincide with a streak at just the right moment, like crucial at-bats over a few playoff series. That�s exactly what�s happening to Daniel Murphy, and it�s cause for us to look deeper into the forces behind his incredible run in this year�s playoffs.

To begin with, Murphy made a conscious decision to pull the ball more often in 2015. Take a look at the percentage of balls he has hit to the pull side since 2008 (as a note, he missed all of 2010 due to injury):



Tending to hit more toward the opposite field for most of his career, Murphy showed more aggressiveness in increasing his pull rate to around league average (40 percent) in 2015. This formed one of two major improvements in his offensive game this past season; the other was a major jump in contact rate that cut his strikeouts almost in half. Look at how his contact rates have changed over the past three years ("O" stands for pitches outside the strike zone, while "Z" stands for pitches inside the strike zone):


Read the rest at:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jabo-the-making-of-postseason-legend-daniel-murphy/


Guest El Segundo Escupidor

Guest El Segundo Escupidor

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Two is fine!

For me, the magnitude of his achievement will fully sink in only after the playoffs.

I wanted to change my avatar to this, but i am so very superstitious:


Edgy MD FCL Mets

Edgy MD

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The real puzzler is how Terry, given all his options, went against all the data and not only started Murphy against lefties going into the playoffs, but batted him fourth and then third, night in and night out, no matter who was on the mound, and Murphy has made him look genius, night in and night out.


Edgy MD FCL Mets

Edgy MD

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Me, too. His pattern was established.

But it still went against the data, and he still surprised to some extent by consistently placing him in the heart of the order, and he still got rewarded for his faith to an extent nobody would've predicted.


batmagadanleadoff College Ball

batmagadanleadoff

Old-Timey Member
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Zvon wrote:
Totally ripped off your caption. I owe you one Batmags!

[fimg=400]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VspC6J9ideE/VigaF5aLx7I/AAAAAAAAiR4/R8KMHYZLrsE/s912-Ic42/2015mfcNLCSgm3-MERCILESS-z15.png[/fimg]



You're definitely gonna hafta make me another Bob Miller card for that.


batmagadanleadoff College Ball

batmagadanleadoff

Old-Timey Member
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Mets Sketch Journal Guy has a lot of catching up to do. Here's his last entry. It's from August. It's Murphy related. Because everything's coming up Murphy. Remember that play (below)?



Farmer Ted Prep Ball

Farmer Ted

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The best was Murph getting the MVP trophy next to Jeffy, who was stone-faced the whole time ("holy shit, I don't have money to pay that guy. Please don't look at me"). Where's that Find Jeff Wilpon thread? That could use some updating.


batmagadanleadoff College Ball

batmagadanleadoff

Old-Timey Member
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Farmer Ted wrote:
The best was Murph getting the MVP trophy next to Jeffy, who was stone-faced the whole time ("holy shit, I don't have money to pay that guy. Please don't look at me"). Where's that Find Jeff Wilpon thread? That could use some updating.


[fimg=955]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5791/22405244705_8e2ca1fbc5_o.jpg[/fimg]


Edited by Guest
Zvon Prep Ball

Zvon

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batmagadanleadoff wrote:
Farmer Ted wrote:
The best was Murph getting the MVP trophy next to Jeffy, who was stone-faced the whole time ("holy shit, I don't have money to pay that guy. Please don't look at me"). Where's that Find Jeff Wilpon thread? That could use some updating.


[fimg=955]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/718/22382551922_035d069a0c_o.jpg[/fimg]


Jeeze. We already have a winner! That is freakin' awesome. One of my favorite flicks too.


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