SABR Talk: Daniel Murphy is Having a Career Year....And it's Real Folks

     For so long, many wondered if Daniel Murphy was starter quality. As a 1B and LF in 2009, Murphy didn't hit for enough power to be worth a league average with a .266 AVG, 12 HR, and poor defense that only netted him a 1.0 WAR. His hitting profile did fit at 2B though and the club tried to shift him over in 2010....but clumsy Murphy wasn't fluid around the bag and ended up getting injured and missing the whole season. Murphy returned in 2011 and produce a .320 AVG which was good enough to net him a 2.8 WAR. This proved that at least the bat was "starter" quality, he just needed a home defensively. 

     2012 rolls around and the front office finally decides that 2B would be his home and his bat provided the most "value" there. Unfortunately nothing changed between 2012 and 2010. Murphy was still clumsy around 2B and produced a -13.3 UZR. That coupled with the fact that he "only" hit .291 reduced his value below the starter level (2.0) as he produced a 1.3 WAR. If there's one thing we've learned about "The Irish Hammer" though, it's that he's tenacious and works hard to be the best player on the team. Murph spent the off-season working with Tim Teufel on being a better fielder and results showed in 2013 as his UZR improved to -5.3. That along with improved power and sneaky steal speed netted him a 2.9 WAR. 

     That season made us believe that Murphy could at least be a good starter worth 3 wins a each year and that's it. We thought we had finally seen Murph's ceiling as a Chase Utley lite type player. Well folks, never doubt the MURPH! Cause he's in-line for a career season that's not just a fluke.

     First off 2014 has seen him make continued improvements defensively. He is receiving positive grades on his range for the 1st time in his career and his UZR is projected to be positive for the 1st time too. His errors vs. average 2B is improving as well and is even being weighed down by his 3 errors in the first two games of his season after coming back from his 1st child's birth. In addition to the above, according to Inside Edge Fielding, so far this season we've seen him improve his conversion rate on plays deemed "Likely" by 4% and on plays deemed "50-50" by 5% to over 66%.

     Offensively, Murphy is also improving. He has taken to the team philosophy of "hunting strikes" better than anyone else on the team. His BB rate is currently a career high 8.9% while his K rate sits at 11.4% which is 1.5 pts better than his career Average. His Line Drive Rate, which is a good indicator of making Solid HARD contact, is up almost 6 percentage points! from his career average. The improved contact is showing in the power too as his SLG has gone up slightly from .403 to .419 as more 2B's turn into HR's thanks to his improving HR/fly-ball rate.

     Overall the offense and defensive improvements have made him worth 2.2 Wins above replacement level 2B ALREADY this season and it puts him on pace to finish the year at 3.5 WAR according to Zips. In fact only 3 2B have added more value than Murphy this season (Brian Dozier, Chase Utley, and Ian Kinsler). Those same 3 guys plus Robinson Cano are the only 2B responsible for "creating" more runs than Murphy too. 

     At only age 29, Murphy still has probably 3-4 solid seasons left in his prime and, me personally, the Mets would be wise to lock him up to a contract extension that would control his cost and keep him as the "second in command" in the clubhouse for years to come.

SABR Talk: Team Defense Playing Big Role in Niese and Gee's Improvement.

By a show of hands, who here thought that the Mets would be a solid defensive team? Well, surprise surprise! So far this year the Mets rank 5th in the MLB for fielding percentage (.987) and errors made (13). In addition, of those 13 errors, 4 of them are from pitchers Jose Valverde and Bartolo Colon. Not counting those guys, the TRUE team defense is tied for best in the MLB with only 9 errors with the Cincinnati Reds. The improved team defense is having an extremely positive effect on #1 and #2 starters Dillon Gee and Jonathan Niese. 

Neither pitcher relies heavily on strikeouts (Niese 6.6 K/ 9, Gee 5.9 K/9) but instead use good strike-zone presence to induce weak contact. If you remember from our story on Travis d'Arnaud, LD% can be a good indicator of how much solid contact batters are getting. Against Dillon Gee, batters only have a LD% rate of 15.4% which, while below his career rate of 18%, is not too far off. For Niese, batters actually have a LD% rate of 24.2% which again, while ABOVE his career rate of 21%, is not too far off.

What this proves is that batters are still getting relatively the same hit patterns from their swings, however, the results from those hit patterns are starkly different. Opponents batting averages on balls in play (BABIP) have taken a nose dive so far this year. Last Year's defense was ranked middle of the road so rightfully Niese and Gee's oBABIP's were a roughly league average .296 and .326 respectively. However, with this season's top tier defense, those oBABIP's are now and astounding .202 and .247 respectively. 

As with batting averages, you can normalize pitcher's ERA's to reflect league average defense. This SABR stat is called Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP)  Unlike AVG's though, where you DO NOT have control over your opponents defense, ERA's can generally finish below their FIP's because YOU DO have control over your own defense. 

We know full well that our team's OF defense with Young, Young, Lagares, and Granderson should finish near the top of the league. Travis d'Arnaud has show excellent defensive capabilities behind the plate with his framing skills. If Tejada, Mruphy, and Wright can continue their excellent defensive paces in the infield, there's no reason to not believe that this team can finish tops in the league defensively, which will in turn improve the team ERA even further.

SABR Talk: Why Travis d'Arnaud is Perfectly Fine.

UH OH guys.....d'Arnaud is only hitting .154 AVG thru the first 14 games of the season. HOW COULD THIS BE!!? He was supposed to be the gem of the Dickey trade. A can't miss prospect who was traded for NOT 1, BUT 2 Cy Young pitchers. Since he's been a Mets he's only hitting .188 with ONLY 2 HR's. WHERE'S THE POWER!? WHERE'S THE HIT TOOL!? WHERE'S MY XANEX!?

Alright let's chill out for a second here folks. YES, d'Arnaud is only hitting .154 so far this season and is striking out at a 20% clip. However, anyone who's been watching every at bat of every game will tell you that not only is Travis d'Arnaud fine.....but he's actually performing better than last year. 

How can this be? Well here's where mixing traditional stats with advanced sabermetrics really shows its worth. 

2013

Last season, d'Arnaud had a .202 AVG on a .244 BABIP which is well below the MLB average. A normalized BABIP of .280 would've given him a .232 AVG in 2013. His Line Drive % rate, a good indicator of how often a player is making solid contact, was a below average 17.7% (MLB Average: 20%). Of the 28 fly balls he hit, only 1 left the park giving him an extremely low 3.6% HR/FB ratio (MLB: 9.5%).

Discipline wise, last season d'Arnaud swung at 24.5% of pitches outside of the strike zone and make contact on 69.5% of them. When the ball WAS in the zone he was only swinging at 64.8% of them including taking 1st pitch strikes at a 62.5% rate. Overall he's whiffing on 8.6% of all pitches he saw.

2014

So far this season, d'Arnaud has a .154 Avg on a .172 BABIP. When normalized, d'Arnaud possesses a .237 AVG. His Line Drive rate so far this year has increased to a solid 24.1%. His HR/FB ratio has also increased to 7.7% which, while still below the MLB average, is a welcome improvement.

Discipline wise, d'Arnaud is swinging at less pitches outside of the zone (23.1%). He's also covering more of the plate with his swing with a 73.3% contact rate on pitches outside of the zone. He's swinging 4% more at balls IN the strike zone and making 5% more contact as well. Lastly, he's become a bit more aggressive, taking only 50% of 1st pitch strikes. Overall he's swinging and missing on only 6.3% of pitches this season.

	2013	2014	YOY Change
AVG	0.202	0.154	Worse
BABIP	0.244	0.172	Worse
Normalized AVG	0.232	0.237	Better
Hard Contact (LD%)	17.7%	24.1%	Better
Driving Power (HR/FB)	3.6%	7.7%	Better
Swinging @ Balls	24.5%	23.1%	Better
Swingin @ Strikes	64.8%	68.8%	Better
Aggressiveness	37.5%	50.0%	Better
Overall Whiffing	8.6%	6.3%	Better

Overall, you can see above that while the batting average is still not ideal, d'Arnaud actually is in fact improving. He's driving the ball better and being more aggressive. If he can cut down on the K's and just continues doing what he's doing and the balls will start dropping. That's the name of the game, You gotta hit em where they ain't and right now Travis is just getting unlucky.