The Curse of Jose Valentin - by Renan

This post would probably have been a lot timelier had I gotten around to it before yesterday’s game (but in my defense, watching the first two games of the Mets-Nationals series really kills the enthusiasm to even think, let alone write, about the boys in Blue and Orange). But something that I’ve been thinking about for a little while, and something that’s emblematic of why the team is probably going to finish in last place (albeit in hyper competitive NL East), is the glaring hole on the right side of our infield. Namely, the team’s insistence on throwing out one of the worst players in baseball at his position day in and day out despite ample evidence that he probably shouldn’t be playing every day. No, not Ike (although, wow, does he ever look incompetent right now). I’m talking about Daniel Murphy.

I get the impression that most of the team’s fans are happy with the job that Murphy’s done this year, and I’m not quite sure why. Probably because he’s been hitting somewhat comfortably over .300 for most of the year (although he’s currently sitting at a much less impressive .290). But the fact of the matter is, aside from being able to hit for a decent average, Murphy does not have a single tool that can be even described as average (no pun intended). Although he’s set a career high in walk percentage, his rate, 7.0% (all numbers per FanGraphs) is still comfortably below league average. But by far the more concerning issue, is Murphy’s complete lack of power. As I’m sure most people know, Murphy has yet to hit a home run this season, in almost 250 bats (by my math, that puts him on pace for exactly zero homers over a full season). But he’s also only hit 15 doubles and one triple all season. Just from watching his approach, it appears as if Murphy has made the conscious decision to not hit the ball in the air in favor of punching groundballs through the shortstop hole and line drives up the middle. The problem is, although that might lead to a bunch of singles, it’s tough to get extra base hits when you don’t elevate the ball, especially with Murphy’s “speed.”

The numbers bear this out. After posting isolated slugging percentages of .161 and .128 his first two years as Met, Murphy has fallen off a cliff to .076 this year. To put that in perspective, Murphy’s been hitting for less power than noted sluggers Willie Bloomquist, Brendan Ryan, and Jose Molina. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Murphy’s ISO is the worst of any regular second baseman in baseball. Put simply, it is hard to be a productive major league player when you don’t walk or hit for any power.

Luckily, the woeful offensive production for second basemen throughout baseball makes Murphy’s bat play up. Murph has put up a wRC+ (essentially a weighted metric describing how many runs a player has created relative to the rest of the league, with a perfectly average hitter producing 100) of 97, meaning he is 3% lower than the average major league second basemen with the bat. Despite his lack of secondary skills, Murphy’s bat would make him a slightly above average second basemen if he played even passable defense. But, oh boy, that defense. Now, I know this is Murphy’s first year as a second basemen, and with that, some growing pains are to be expected, but there’s no way to sugar coat the fact that Murphy has been simply atrocious with the glove this year. In fact, according to FanGraphs’ defensive metrics, Murphy has been worth –8.7 runs defensively this year. Thus, Murphy’s glove alone has cost the Mets nearly one win this season (it’s generally accepted that every 10 runs is worth one win). In fact, Murphy’s defensive mark pegs him as one of the 10 worst defensive players in baseball. (On as side note, three of the marks worse that Murphy’s are Derek Jeter (–11.7), our own Lucas Duda (–10.6), and Curtis Granderson (–10.4).  Apparently the “defensive revolution” that permeated baseball a couple of years ago hasn’t quite made it to the five boroughs). If you don’t buy the defensive numbers (and many don’t), you just have to look at the first two games this series where Murphy made a couple of big errors on Wednesday and botched a huge potential double play on Tuesday to see that Murphy has been horrid defensively this season.

Add it all up and Murphy has been worth a grand total of 0.1 wins this season, making him the third worst second baseman in all of baseball. When you combine that with the fact that Ike has been the worst player in baseball, and we’re about to get Jason Bay back to the lineup, and it’s hard to believe the Mets are doing as well as they are (all hail Johan, Dickey and Wright!).  The larger issue is that I don’t really see what choice the Mets have but to run Murphy out there every day. At least with Ike there’s the option of sending him down to the minors and putting Duda at first (which would probably improve two positions substantially, at least defensively). But as the injuries to Tejada and Cedeno have shown, the Mets just don’t have the middle infield depth, on either the major or minor league rosters to adequately replace him. Valdespin has shown that he has his own issues as an infielder (but at least he has speed and occasional power, two things that Murphy lacks), the supposed second baseman of the future, Reese Havens has been alternatively hurt and horrible this year, and Philip Evans is nowhere near ready to contribute at the major league level. Thus, at least for 2012 anyway, it looks like we’re going to ride Murphy for all he’s worth. But it’s hard to envision a scenario where the Mets continue to play winning baseballs when their entire right side of the infield can’t hit or catch the ball (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both Niese and Gee have ERAs higher than their peripherals would indicate. The Mets are doing a terrible job of turning balls in play into outs and it’s killing the team all season). Unless Murphy rediscovers his power stroke, it looks like we’re going to have to live with a younger version of Louis Castillo for another few months.