Blengino: Let’s talk about Daniel Murphy
From SABR member Tony Blengino at FanGraphs on October 22, 2015:
Baseball really is something else. Coming into this postseason, there was no shortage of potential playoff narratives. You had the teams with the three best records in baseball, all hailing from the same division. There was the Toronto offensive juggernaut, and the Royals proving they weren’t a one-year phenomenon. There was phoenix-like rise of the Astros, America’s introduction to Rougned Odor, the two-headed Kershaw/Greinke monster from Los Angeles, the Cubs’ young bats, and the Mets’ young arms.
Enter, against this backdrop, Mets’ second baseman Daniel Murphy, who prior to this October drew attention only for arguably being baseball’s most average regular, the game’s equivalent of vanilla ice cream, suddenly deciding to morph into a latter-day version of Babe Ruth.
While the effect of Murphy’s sudden power explosion on the Mets’ postseason run has taken center stage, the near-term future of both player and club has become an enduring secondary plot line. Will the Mets extend a qualifying offer to free-agent-to-be Murphy? Until yesterday, the answer appeared to be no, though the rumor mill is now listing in the opposite direction. Might Murphy accept? The odds of that appear to be declining, in inverse proportion to the possibility that at least one club could lob a lucrative four- or five-year deal in his direction.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/lets-talk-about-daniel-murphy/
Originally published: October 22, 2015. Last Updated: October 22, 2015.