LF - Daniel Murphy Debate

Excepts from Baseball Daily Digest about Bill James' lofty prediciton that Daniel Murphy will have an .849 OPS in 2009

http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/blogs/2009/03/08/mets-masher-murphy-mirage

"...Murphy’s Minor League career isn’t even terribly impressive. In 957 at-bats, Murph’s got a slash line of .290/.352/.444. Most of his playing time came in 2007 in A-ball with St. Lucie (.768 OPS) and last year in AA Binghamton (.870 OPS). He had a good walk rate in his limited Major League experience at about 12%; it was 7.7% with St. Lucie and 9.8% with Binghamton. His strikeout rate with the Mets was high though, at 21.4%; it was 12.2% with St. Lucie and 12.9% with Binghamton.... "

"... because he hit a lot of line drives, he was very fortunate on balls in play, reflected by his BABIP of .386. If we assume he’s a normal baseball player with a LD% around 20% give or take a couple of percentage points, we would expect his BABIP to naturally be as many as 50 or 60 points lower to the .320-.330 area. As such, his true level of production isn’t the .373 wOBA he had last year nor the .368 Bill James predicts for 2009; it’s likely much closer to the .330 that Marcel predicts..."

"... Murphy’s production last year is unsustainable. Even if we assume that he naturally hits a lot of line drives, say 24%, he’s still going to have a proportion of about 9% of his line drives (which dropped in for hits last season) finding defenders’ gloves in 2009. Even if Murphy is as good as Bill James says he will be, there’s no reason to project that with the information at hand."