Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo received a fair amount of backlash when he handed second baseman Daniel Murphy a three-year, $37.5 million contract this offseason. It looked like he was settling for average after striking out with several higher-priced free agents. Murphy was coming off the hot streak of his life, nuking playoff homers like a young Reggie Jackson, and everyone knew it was unsustainable. Still, Rizzo took a chance on Murphy, knowing he would be steady at the very least, and hoping that lightning might strike Murphy’s bat twice. The unreal home run numbers from last year’s postseason aren’t there, but Murphy has managed to morph himself into a completely new hitter, and is a big part of why the Nationals currently sit atop the division.
This season, it appears as if Murphy has shifted his approach at the plate. Like many other Nats’ hitters this year, he has been particularly focused on waiting for his pitch, and then driving it when he gets what he wants. Murphy is only swinging at 43.4 percent of pitches he sees, which is way down from his career average. This selectiveness is why his walk rate has almost doubled from last season. But by waiting for the pitch he wants, Murphy is also able to drive the ball much more effectively once he does swing, which has been the real key for his success.
Murphy is a great contact bat; he almost always putting the bat on the ball if he is swinging. In fact, from 2009-15, he made contact with about 90 percent of pitches he swung at. This year that number is down to 80.8 percent. And that’s actually a good thing! Murphy isn’t losing hand-eye coordination. Rather, he is more focused on selecting his pitch and then pouncing on it. Murphy is slugging .679 this year, much higher than his career .428 slugging percentage. It seems as if a switch was flipped last October. Murphy realized he can swing about 10 percent harder and hammer out more extra-base hits than ever before, even if he swings and misses a little more often. Or he can stick with his middling ways of making contact with everything, hit .280 with limited pop, and call it a perfectly average season.
Luckily for the Nationals, Murphy decided to swing a little harder. He is swinging and missing more than usual, but his strikeout rate is still in line with his career average. He is drawing walks at a solid clip, especially based on his past career numbers. And he is absolutely tearing the cover off the ball. According to Fangraphs, his hard hit percentage is off the charts, with 43.8 percent of balls Murphy has put in play being classified as “hard hit” (which is actually a higher percentage than Bryce Harper). I mean, he is even destroying lefties, batting .529 and slugging .824 against southpaws!
Murphy is hotter than the sun right now, and even though he will inevitably cool off, his newfound plate approach will stick with him throughout the season. At age 31, Daniel Murphy has somehow re-invented himself, just in time for the Nationals to jump out to a 3.5 game division lead.