JABO: Daniel Murphy’s Most Surprising Home Run
The postseason always provides some surprising storylines, but this year, nothing has been more unexpected than Daniel Murphy turning into Babe Ruth. The Mets second baseman is mostly known for his extremely high rate of contact — he posted the lowest strikeout rate of any hitter in Major League Baseball this year — but has turned into a super slugger in the playoffs, hitting five home runs in the Mets first seven postseason games. While the team’s pitching staff is their greatest strength, Murphy’s success against the best pitchers in baseball is a big reason why the team is two wins away from reaching the World Series.
But even given his recent power surge, his home run off Jake Arrieta in the first inning of game two remains something to marvel at. Not just because hitting a home run off Jaker Arrieta is impressive, but because the home run was one of the least likely we’ve seen all year.
First, watch the home run for yourself.
Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I thought one of the more unusual things was that the pitch immediately prior to the HR pitch he hit out just foul. You rarely see a hitter hit two in the same at bat, much less a tough pitch against the presumptive Cy Young winner. Considering he’s taken Greinke, Kershaw and Lester deep as well, this is a surreal run he’s been on.
If only he had broken his bat and torn some stitches loose on the foul home run.
Wonder Boy
It really had the feeling that he was finding his range. I am surprised, and pleased, that anyone — even Arrieta! — is still trying to pitch him low and/or inside, considering the pull-happy approach he’s been taking on this late-season and postseason hot stretch. His bat is super-quick, ridiculously quick, inside right now but it seems like that makes high and away a bit of a weakness.
As far as location, you’re only looking at pitches that are AT MOST as high as the one Murphy hit. If you look at a bucket of pitches that AVERAGE the height of the one he hit, you’d have a lot less ground balls and a lot more balls in play. Can’t help but think that a majority of those 14,000+ pitches were in the dirt, which would explain the huge amount of whiffs.
This also immediately struck me as a cherry picked bucket of pitches.
Also I expected the big reveal to be how many of those pop ups and fly balls that were that low became home runs. I guess that info isn’t (easily) available?
It’s not quite this Ruthian, but Murphy posted a .241 ISO over his final 208 PAs of the regular season with 19 doubles, 2 triples & 8 homers for a .303/.327/.544. in 49 games (44 starts). It would be great to see an article on what adjustments he’s made and whether some of his increased power production may stick.
While transformations at the ago of 30 are not impossible (Jose Bautista) they are unlikely. A few things that stand out about Murphy’s 2015 season: K rate way down (in fact toughest to K in MLB), ISO up, babip way down. Digging deeper, you can see that his o-zone swing rate is very high so clearly he’s trading Ks to make contact on balls out of the zone that are still most likely outs (BA in line with career numbers).
If Murphy would trade those K’s for more walks, *that* would more likely be something transformative, forcing pitchers to throw him more strikes and thus seeing more pitches he could do more damage with. Problem remains that Murphy likes to swing the bat. All that extra contact (Ks went from 86 to 38) did yield a few more HRs (RC+ still just 110) and so I think it’s more likely that Murphy is just going thru a hot stretch. He’s always been particularly streaky for a contact hitter.
That’s similar to my armchair analysis too. His regular season looked very typical Murphy–low K, low BB, good XBH pop but not a ton of homers. He only hit 14, which is a career high but not that removed from the 12 or so he hit last year. I think he’s just in a particularly good stretch right now, maybe coupled with some new things he’s learned from Kevin Long.
But I think the meaning of this streak is exactly that Murphy has come to peace with the hitter he is — that is, a really good contact hitter — and stopped trying to be more selective than that. The “controlled aggression” approach the Mets have been talking about for a while, and put into practice much better with Long than they did with Hudgens, is all about learning not to take too many pitches you can hit for the sake of being artificially selective about the strike zone.
“Particularly streaky” strikes me as a meaningless claim, but certainly contact hitters are always going to look streakier than other hitters because of their reliance on BABIP.
Tough to say at this point if this is anything permanent but the Mets have mentioned that Murphy changed his approach from being more of an all fields hitter to a pull guy late in the season.
Certainly wouldn’t be the last 2B/3B on the Mets to experience a big bump in power – they let the last one walk, too.
Here you go: http://m.mets.mlb.com/news/article/154732828/daniel-murphy-enjoying-new-hitting-approach
So, how many of the balls in play that were less than 12.76″ off the ground went for dingers? I’d thought that was going to be the punch line…
I was curious too (you beat me by a minute). Fortunately @darenw and baseball savant come through with the answer. 2.
https://twitter.com/darenw/status/655942629549457408
Reminds me of Adam Kennedy’s run in the 2002 post-season, only even hotter. A mostly batting average 2b who had a post-season homer binge.
Sounds like luck doing the Cubs in so far. Better team by BaseRuns by a good margin. Hopefully luck evens out and Cubs come back an win the series. Lucky home run by Murphy there.
Well, at least BaseRuns flags fly forever.
they should
The BaseRuns Playoffs would look like this –
Dodgers defeat Cubs in the NLCS
Blue Jays defeat Astros in the ALCS
Blue Jays defeat Dodgers in the World Series
Not sure that’s the outcome Cubs fans would want right now
Yeah right! When have the Cubs ever experienced bad luck?
Kind of ironic that a Cub fan would bring up luck in a game started by Jake Arrieta…
Why is that ironic?
You know, it’s a rain on you wedding day kind of ironic.
Arrieta’s been very lucky this year ERA and W/L record wise.
So far, it appears the Mets are the better team. Right now. In October. That’s what the postseason does. It determines who the best team is at the moment. Not over the entire preceding season.
And may the best team (now) win!
Honestly I think even this is a radical overstatement of how much the playoffs have to do with team quality. The Mets are a very good team, but then again so are the Cubs. Mostly what’s happened is probably random chance, along with in-game strategies that work once or twice but wouldn’t be replicable for larger samples. All the more reason to enjoy it when providence smiles. LGM!
Eh, I think the Mets are pretty clearly the superior team. And not because of the playoff results. Just by looking at each team’s roster.
Mets have an average lineup wRC+ more than 10 points higher than the Cubs. That’s a massive difference.
And then obviously the Mets have a pitching advantage as well.
Not in the second half.
Mets out scored cubs by 19 runs while the cubs gave up 18 fewer earned runs. Teams were pretty even in aggregate. Of course the Met’s pitching depth is clearer superior.
CubTime spelled backwards is EmitBuc…
Fun piece, but one small quibble – you use as your data set 14,318 pitches that were as low OR LOWER than the one Arrieta threw to Murphy. That means the ball Murphy hit was equal to the HIGHEST pitched balls in that sample, which makes the subsequence probabilities (i.e., # of such balls hit into play, # hit into the air, etc.) far less impressive than you make it out to be.