While Daniel Murphy was largely viewed as a rental when the Cubs acquired him, president of baseball operations Theo Epstein hasn’t closed the door on retaining the veteran infielder, writes MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat. “I wouldn’t rule anything out,” said Epstein. “He did a lot to right our offense right after he got here and contribute while being asked to play a bigger role than we envisioned when we got him because of injuries and because of a lack of performance offensively and because of the schedule.” Murphy stumbled out of the gates in 2018 upon returning to the from offseason knee surgery, but he hit .322/.358/.502 from July through season’s end — including a .297/.329/.471 slash after the Nats traded him to the Cubs. Addison Russell’s suspension has clouded the Cubs’ middle-infield picture, though Murphy’s defense at second base has graded out terribly over the past two seasons, which the Cubs will have to consider.
It seems plausible that some clubs will prefer Murphy as a first baseman rather than a second baseman, though the Cubs have Anthony Rizzo locked in at first, so they’d have to be convinced he can play second base on a fairly regular basis.
Here’s more from the division …
- New Reds skipper David Bell discussed his approach to the position, as Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer writes. He acknowledges being relatively new to the application of analytics to the field, but says he has “gone through a process the last five years of asking a lot of questions, understanding the information, understanding how to utilize it and how to factor it into all decisions.” That experience will surely help Bell in his current role, in which he says he’ll be open to incorporating all manner of information. Indeed, he indicated that he finds it “a very exciting time in baseball” with whole new approaches to deploying rosters percolating around the game.
- The Brewers undeniably had a successful 2018 campaign, but it occurred despite of the struggles of righty Chase Anderson, who inked a short-term extension at the end of the prior season. As Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, Anderson wrapped up the current year saying he has plans to get back on track for 2019. GM David Stearns, meanwhile, says the organization expects the same. Anderson, who’ll soon turn 31, did finish with a solid 3.93 ERA in 158 innings. But ERA estimators including FIP (5.22), xFIP (4.79), and SIERA (4.68) were not impressed, and Anderson failed to sustain the slight but notable velocity bump from the season prior.
David Bell will be great
Prob not … he will need a better team. Although they have a lot of solid pieces
Trolls, lol. How sad @bravesfan. You are right they need to add several pieces to be good in 19, and continue on develop the players working their way through the farm system.
What’s that even mean
We can only hope he will be
I agree, as long as Castellini let’s his front office do their jobs
If Anderson is in the right state of mind we need to keep him unless you get a good offer for him. He may come around with Nelson back cause they work good together. But then again I also think that Wil Myers could be a good replacement for Thames ,Broxton and Perez plus I was also a big Orf fan too lol.
I’m curious as to how two starting pitchers can “work good together”
They had said two years ago when they were both pitching regularly they help each other and push each other. They talked a lot during and in between games
The wishful thinking on a Nelson return is silly. And a “good offer” for Anderson? What is that…two cans of Strohs?
Murphy’s a solid contact hitter, but a liability at 2nd base. If he can’t be retained on the cheap, they should explore other options.
Agreed
With so many pitchers today occupying roster spots, the multi-positional player Madden basically reinvented (any Sox fan remember “supersub” John Kemnedy from the early 70s? – they’be been called utility players for generations) is more important than ever. Murphy’s value this past year was magnified because injuries depleted the team’s offense. He’d likely have more value to an AL club where he can DH but then play the field when injuries dictate and to occasionally rest a starter. Sort of like JDM in Boston. Like many before me have suggested, he’d look good in pinstripes if Stanton were traded or given LF.
Cubs should consider adding LeMahieu at 2B
$, splits and history all point to that being a poor plan.
And the fact that this front office is OBP oriented and realize that average is that meaningful of a stat
What about a trade for Whit Merrifield?
They shouldn’t have traded him for Ian Stewart in the first place
That would be awesome. Come full circle. Jim Hendry traded him and tyler Colvin for a garbage return. That trade was as bad as the milton Bradley signing.
pretty sure that was a Theo trade, actually
If not for the presence of Pujols, Murphy would make sense at first for the Angels, who got abysmal production there last year.
The Angels need to stop signing over the hill players with limited skills and physical problems.
They’ve done that 80% of the time since their inception.
Right moves Reds right there – resign Scooter trade Nick not the other way around, they are very close to being solid contender.
nah Senzel will start in OF and Billy will be the odd man out, maybe traded. Offense gets stronger, yes a downgrade in defense but I think all of Reds nation will be on board with it
They have a lot in the OF. Shebler, Ervin, Hamilton, Winker now Senzel. In my opinion they all are good enough o play every day. Ervin is the dark horse here… I really like this kid. Problem is I don’t think any can play Centerfield adequately. Shebler can do it but he’s below league average.
Their biggest problem is they play in the toughest division in baseball. It isn’t like they have one or two teams to jump over. They have four that all just finished with winning records and should be as good if not better next season.
Murphy needs a DH role with the occasional fill in as a value add. Playing in the NL is just a detriment to him playing as many games as possible without getting injured or being a liability on the field.
Padam, I totally agree. How come you basically said what I just posted but in far fewer words? If only I scrolled down, simply agreeing would have been sufficient.
Love the multiple ERA indicators that are all different. One is just about a half a run different than the other 2 and way off on standard ERA for all 3 sabr indicators. Lol.
Yes, standard ERA is a really outdated way to measure a pitcher’s effectiveness and FIP/xFIP and SIERA generally are correct in measuring pitcher effectiveness and anticipating which pitchers will regress heavily. The differences in the three indicators have everything to do with how much weight one places on defense, but if you are interested in knowing which pitchers have unsustainable performance and are highly likely to be worse next year, I’d look at those numbers way before I’d look at ERA, which really has so much noise in it that it’s almost meaningless.
This is what I don’t like about sabermetrics. ” have everything to do with how much weight one places on defense “. How is there not one defensive standard? Same with defensive stats.
I refuse to believe – especially from watching him 19 times per year – that Kevin Kiermaier is 4 to 5 times better than any other outfielder on the planet according to defensive runs saved. I’ve seen Kiermaier misjudge balls and take terrible routes. Yes, he is a good outfielder, but not the greatest defender, seemingly, of all-time.
Nevermind infield defense. How can an infielder be judged solely by numbers when half the time these days, they are playing ” out of position ” because of shifting?
A 3rd baseman playing short right field – which I hope is outlawed this winter – in a dramatic shift is going to have chances counted as a 3rd baseman for fielding balls out there? It’s just bizarre.
Agreed
Okay then southpaw. How about this: Ryan Madson, who is a reliever for the Dodgers, has allowed five runs in the last two games in the World Series. The Dodgers lost both of those games.
Ryan Madson’s ERA in this World Series? It is 0.00. So tell me again why ERA is such an important stat.
Also, teams have been shifting since the 1870s. It’s not a new thing at all.
ERA for relievers is just about useless. Too few innings that easily skews when having a bad outing, or, in your example, when a reliever inherits runners on base and allows said runners to score.
You and I both know from watching that, despite not giving up an earned run of his own, Madson failed to do his job.
ERA is a lot more important and relative regarding SP. The optimal situation for any team, if you were to poll the GMs, would be to have a SP that gives you 6 or 7 innings, on average, while giving up 3 runs. That means he is pitching effectively over a larger sample of innings, making standard ERA more relative.
My contention that there is a lack of talent in MLB is played out in the apparent shift to teams using ” openers ” followed by multiple relievers. The main reason this is happening is because there are no longer 5 pitchers on many teams that can pitch effectively for more than 1 or 2 innings, not because they really desire to do that.
Now, I understand this is the way the game might be going, but I don’t think the game is going to benefit from it. The game has become tedious to watch with all the pitching changes and the lack of contact in general.
If you, or anyone else, think people are excited at players walking, even though they can’t hit .250, then that’s a sad outgrowth of this sabr revolution.
Shifting has never been as extreme as it has become the past 5 years.
Plus, shifting is only marginally more effective than standard defensive set ups. Something like it saves 6 or 7 hits per team, per month , on average, during the season. And if they do away with infielders being allowed to play in the outfield, that will drop even further.
They spoke of this all season long on Yankees games. To me, it seems ridiculous. If the numbers showed it saved hundreds of hits, I wouldn’t be able to argue with it, but it doesn’t.
7 hits per month is 40+ hits per year. That’s actually huge.
Sabr has come to be so important because there are so many marginal players in the big leagues these days, every team is looking to find a slight edge.
The good hitters and pitchers are still the good hitters and pitchers. I haven’t looked it up, but I’m going to guess that the top pitchers in the league, as far as ERA, also have excellent xFIP, SIERA, etc,etc. It’s when you get into most of the rest of the pitchers in MLB, that’s where things get sticky.
I’d say at least half the pitchers in MLB are nothing more than average. This means they are going to have great days and terrible days, with most days being so-so. I know that doesn’t sound as good as throwing out fancy acronym stats, but when it comes down to it, isn’t that all sabr does?
Same with position players. So, if player A is a 2nd baseman with a 1.8 WAR and the average 2nd baseman in MLB has a 2.1 WAR, does that mean anything more than player A is slightly worse than league average? Does that mean the team with player A can’t win anything of significance because he is not .03 as good as an average MLB 2nd baseman? It’s so miniscule as to be pointless.
Even Bill James, the so-called father of sabermetrics, is often on MLB network saying these are just mathematical parameters and not to use them as the end all and be all. I take issue with being attacked on this site by people who seemingly take sabr as gospel, yet most probably have nothing but a very basic understanding of what they truly are.
Hell, even one of the writers on this site tried to write about, and figure out, how WAR was figured, and honestly admitted he really had no clue as it was too complex. That’s because it’s overkill. It’s a tool, nothing more, nothing less. Certainly not fool proof.
It is a tool, yes. I don’t think anyone takes it as gospel – that’s your take on it. I love the research Bill James did to create the analytics movement that currently creates winning baseball (James, of course, works for the Red Sox, who have won 3 World Series since he moved into the front office). James is a curmudgeonly guy now, and he seems to be angry that younger people have piggybacked off his research, but his basic notions remain:
Outs are important.
Getting on base is the most important skill in baseball.
Runs matter.
Batting average, RBI and ERA are incredibly unimportant stats.
(Bill James has written all of these things in his books).
Wow, Bill James said runs matter? I think that’s been obvious since the first day baseball was ever played.
I agree that outs matter. Unfortunately, from what I’ve read, many teams don’t think strikeouts are bad. If they did, there wouldn’t be an epidemic of K’s in every ballgame played the past few years.
Offensive sabermetrics seems to hold run production as the holy grail. You can get as many runners on base as you’d like, but you, for the most part, still need a hitter to knock those runners in.
How is a walk seen as something wonderful, yet a batter that knocks in 100+ runners is not considered an important part of the run production equation? Makes zero sense.
Hell, on my favorite team, Stanton drove in 100 runs, yet could’ve probably driven in 30 – 40 more had he cut down his strikeouts by 25% AND also been on base more to have an opportunity to score more, as well.
I don’t care what Bill James or any sabr believer says, average (especially with RISP ) and RBIs are still pertinent stats. Certainly not all encompassing, but still important.
RBIs are completely dependent on other batters getting on base. BA w/ RISP is a nice stat but is also never stable year-to-year – “clutch” just doesn’t exist as a sustainable stat.
Walks are important because they allow a hitter to expose the pitcher, they fatigue the pitcher, and they put a runner on base.
The teams that walk the most and strike out the least are the teams that win the most. How about that!
The teams with the lowest offensive K rate in 2018 – Houston, Cleveland, Boston. Very analytics-driven teams.
This is why sabr believers make me laugh. You think it took 150 years of professional baseball plus Ivy league mathematicians to figure out that walking and not striking out are good outcomes for a team? Lol
I’ve never claimed walks are not valuable, but this obsession with OBP while sneering at players that hit for a high average is laughable.
Yes, RBIs are dependent on runners being on base, but having runners on means nothing if you don’t have hitters that can make contact and drive them in. You do a lot more damage with a double if the bases are loaded than a walk.
Actually it’s become so important because you can’t have Mike Trout at every position and a rotation full of Clayton Kershaws. You kind of have to make due with less than perfect players and still make a functional team.
Hence why more information is better, because it give you a better picture of what a player is good at and whether or not he fits what you need.
You don’t get attacked for attacking sabermetrics, you get attacked for attacking something you don’t even have a cursory understanding of on a daily basis. You have this vision of analytics as some arcane art practiced on computers by people who don’t watch baseball, instead of just a bunch of people using new information to help them make decisions.
Tell you what, when your brilliance regarding sabermetrics gets you hired in a baseball front office, I’ll listen to you. Even then, I’ll probably still mock you.
You wouldn’t know the first thing to do with a team if you were ever put in a dugout, even a little league one.
Tell you what, when you get a job at a front office, this weak attempt at a burn won’t just be an embarrassment for you…
If I’m Theo, I’m. It even hesitating to resign Murphy. They need HITTING. As long as he’s serviceable (which he is) at 2nd, it’ll do. He’s one of the best hitters in baseball, you don’t just let that walk — especially given the hitting woes the Cubs just went through last year.
**I’m not even hesitating.
He is no longer serviceable defensively as a regular, and getting on base is useless if you can’t advance or take the extra base. He’s a poor base runner that’s slow. His bat to ball skills are undeniable, but I’m not sure he has a place on an NL contender any longer.
TrueOutcome—100% agree—Murphy is nowhere near serviceable defensively. I watch every Cubs game and he is just a poor defensive player. No range—-he doesn’t dive, he falls….incredibly below average on the double play turn. Couple things after he came that I realized even more—Russell and Baez (and some others) are just superior defensive players. Tend to take it for granted, but once you see something else there (Murphy) you realize how good others are. And actually, appreciated Murphy as a hitter—but also understand that he probably has to hit .350 or better to be a really valuable asset. And to the Cubs “needing” hitting…they actually needed to score exactly one more run at some point during that last and could still be playing today. They did lead the league in average and were second in on base percentage. I would have certainly loved to see a more consistent offense, but getting granular—one more run could have changed a lot of things.
He absolutely is serviceable, defensively. His fielding percentage was rather good last year. Bottom line is, he makes the vast majority of plays that come his way.
He’s still a premiere hitter in the league, and a TEAM THAT NEEDS HITTING, like the Cubs, would benefit having him around.
Addison Russell can go into the stands and make a play…great. He’s still a bum that can’t hit a beach ball with a tennis racket.
They need everybody not named Murphy to hit, actually. So if I was Theo I’d be much more concerned with a lot of other things instead of another 1b
I like the fact the Reds are trying to embrace analytics. It will never work as long as Castellini continues to ignore the front office and make decisions that he’s not qualified to make. They have a good nucleus, now let your front office people do their job.