Once a Met, Not a Met in 2023

[G-Fafif]

Once a Met old-timer, an active professional baseball player in 2023, it’s Daniel Murphy getting quacking.

The Long Island Ducks today announced the signing of 12-year Major League veteran infielder Daniel Murphy. He begins his first season with the Ducks and 16th in professional baseball.

“This game is part of my soul, and my passion for playing grew as great as ever when I discovered certain things that I believe will enable me to be productive on the field again,” said Murphy. “I am immensely grateful to Mr. Boulton, Wally Backman and Michael Pfaff for allowing me to live my dream for a second time.”

Murphy has 12 seasons of Major League experience in his professional career, including seven with the New York Mets (2008-09, 2011-15), three with the Washington Nationals (2016-18), one with the Chicago Cubs (2018) and two with the Colorado Rockies (2019-20). He has played in 1,452 big league games, posting a .296 batting average, 138 home runs, 735 RBIs, 710 runs, 1,572 hits, 371 doubles, 29 triples, a .341 on-base percentage and a .796 OPS. He represented the National League at the MLB All-Star Game on three occasions (2014, ’16 and ‘17) and won two National League Silver Slugger Awards (2016-17). Murphy also finished second in the voting for National League Most Valuable Player in 2016 after leading the league in doubles (47), slugging percentage (.595) and OPS (.985), finishing behind only Chicago Cubs infielder Kris Bryant.

The Florida native has also appeared in 25 postseason games during his MLB career, compiling a .309 batting average with eight home runs, 19 RBIs, 21 runs, 30 hits, three doubles, 15 walks and a .986 OPS. In 2015, he led the Mets to their fifth World Series appearance in franchise history. He became the first player in Major League history to hit a home run in six consecutive postseason games and became the second player in league history to drive in at least one run in seven consecutive playoff games. He was named the National League Championship Series Most Valuable Player after batting .529 and homering in all four games of the Mets series sweep against the Chicago Cubs.

The 37-year-old made his Major League debut on August 2, 2008, against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. He went 1-for-4 with a run scored in the game, collecting his first MLB hit with a second inning single off three-time All-Star Roy Oswalt. His first big league home run came one week later at Shea Stadium when he launched a sixth inning two-run homer off Renyel Pinto in a win over the Florida Marlins. He is a two-time winner of the MLBPAA Mets Heart and Hustle Award (2013-14) and helped lead Team USA to the gold medal at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. Murphy was originally selected by the Mets in the 13th round of the 2006 amateur draft out of Jacksonville University.

[metirish]

Wow good for the Ducks and for Murph

[Edgy MD]

Good reason to go east.

[metsmarathon]

really wish they'd come play against the sussex miners in the frontier league...

[Edgy MD]

New Jersey had been the anchor of the Atlantic League, hosting as many as four teams, but when the dust cleared after MLB's Covid-lockdown reorganization of affiliates, the Garden State ended up shut out of the Atlantic League fun.

Minor league affiliation with MLB is bad. And the affiliation-lite that several independent leagues have signed up for has done its share of damage as well.

[Frayed Knot]

I'm surprised to see Muffy returning. That's gotta be a tough gig to take for not much money in your late 30s with three young kids at home. And I assume he hasn't lived in NY in years.

Murph has a younger brother who played college and minor league ball. It would be a good move for the Ducks to hook him up as well.

[G-Fafif]

Jeurys Familia is back with his old team — the Oakland A’s.

[Fman99]

Chasen Shrieve has made the DET opening day roster, I read somewhere

[G-Fafif]

What the Duck? 2019 Met screwed out of bonus bucks Adeiny Hechavarria plants webbed feet on Long Island.

[G-Fafif]

[batmagadanleadoff]

Catching up with Dom Smith. (The skinny: he's playing every day and struggling big time).

.226/.324/.226 0 HR's 58 OPS+

Struggling Smith still searching for hitting stroke

Excerpt:

It hasn’t happened so far for Smith, who in 15 games has yet to produce an extra-base hit. He’s batting .233 (14-for-60) with four RBIs. But most troubling is the fact his slugging percentage is identical to his batting average, the ultimate confirmation of a lack of power.

[***]

Smith appreciates the show of confidence from his manager, especially when the results haven’t necessarily warranted that kind of support.

“He knows I can do damage up there,” Smith said. “I know I can do damage up there. I’ve just got to keep grinding, keep working, to get us some good at-bats. It’s a long year. We’ve got to keep grinding, and we’ll get it turned around.”

https://www.masnsports.com/blog/struggl ... ing-stroke

[G-Fafif]

The return of the Dom Bomb.

[Edgy MD]

A ninth-inning solo homer with his team down 16-0. It may be the least valuable homerun, team-wise, of his career, and simultaneously the most valuable, monkey-off-the-back-wise.

[G-Fafif]

Former Met manager Luis Rojas and former Met reliever Pete Walker goin' at it in Toronto.

[G-Fafif]

Kevin Plawecki has inked a minor league contract with the Padres.

[G-Fafif]

The Metropolitan influence is strong this year in Japanese baseball.

When Kodai Senga delivered a 99-mile-per-hour fastball to Luis Arraez of the Miami Marlins on April 2, he became the 14th Japanese player to appear in a game for the Mets, the most of any team in the major leagues. The Seattle Mariners are next with 11.

It is a connection fostered over the years, with enthusiastic support from Bobby Valentine, the former Mets manager, who has led teams in both the United States and Japan. And the pipeline, it appears, goes both ways: This season, five of the 12 managers in Nippon Professional Baseball spent at least part of their playing careers with the Mets.

The rookie managers Masato Yoshii of the Chiba Lotte Marines and Kazuo Matsui of the Seibu Lions, along with Tsuyoshi Shinjo, the second-year manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters, all made their major league debuts with the Mets. Shingo Takatsu of the Yakult Swallows and Kazuhisa Ishii of the Rakuten Golden Eagles played in Queens after starting elsewhere.

Though unnamed, Armando Reynoso figures into a fond Yoshii memory of how Bobby V got things done.

Japanese managers have historically been known for being far more demanding. Rarely content to leave things to their players, they tend to nitpick the form of their pitchers and demand things be done by a time-honored book.

Asked if he was emulating a communication style he observed in the United States, Yoshii quickly attributed his approach to something he gained from his Mets experience with Valentine.

“I’ll never forget Bobby coming to me once to say that a rehabbing pitcher was about to rejoin the rotation, so how would I feel about pitching out of the bullpen,” Yoshii said. “I said, ‘I’m not comfortable there and prefer the rotation.’ He went with a six-man rotation after that. I was forever appreciative. That’s the kind of openness I strive for here.”

Also, Tsuyoshi Shinjo,was unimpressed by Norfolk.

“For lunch we smeared peanut butter and jelly over two pieces of bread and called that a meal,” he said in Japanese. “For showering, we got these ragged towels that barely dried us. It made me realize that the guys who actually make it to the big leagues must have such a will to fight by surviving that environment to emerge from it after so long.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/spor ... ience.html

[Edgy MD]

Amazing to see The United States giving Japan a lesson in cartel capitalism.

[metirish]

Well said

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

eveyone needs to lighten up

[batmagadanleadoff]

I like how he starts off by writing that a baseball game is a place for people from all walks of life to be included. Then he goes on for like a hundred paragraphs how that group intentionally offends his religion but without ever explaining why or how.

What a bunch of primitive neanderthal savages most of us are, believing that the universe is controlled by an invisible magician who floats in the sky and makes everything happen. It's nuttier than Jack and the Beanstalk. What an ignoramus this guy is.

[metirish]

It's in response to this

https://nypost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v ... -fiasco%2F

[batmagadanleadoff]

Wow. They really do mock religion by design.

[Fman99]

It's in response to this

https://nypost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v ... -fiasco%2F

The Dodgers made headlines when they invited the group – full of “nuns” with names such as Sister T’aint A Virgin and Sister Porn Again – to their 10th annual Pride Night, scheduled for June 16.

Lol

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

There's a lot of violent and over the top objection to Pride events, Bud Light getting slaughtered because of an Instagram post by a trans person, Target stores getting roughed up for having rainbow on clothing displays, people worried the gays are coming for their kids.

[MFS62]

There's a lot of violent and over the top objection to Pride events, Bud Light getting slaughtered because of an Instagram post by a trans person, Target stores getting roughed up for having rainbow on clothing displays, people worried the gays are coming for their kids.

And I just heard that Conservative-owned Chick-Fil-A is being attacked because they hired a diversity coordinator. (I didn't hear many other details)
This anti-pride movement is getting crazy and not going away.
Can one of the mods split this off to a separate thread - maybe in the non- baseball forum?
Later