Having now hit five home runs in his last five post-season games, I think we can no longer resist the inevitable: Daniel Murphy of the New York Mets should run for Speaker of the House. Murphy, a native of Jacksonville, Florida, is a Christian conservative and could unite the warring factions of the Republican party. He might not be popular in Los Angeles or Chicago right now, but there are very few Republicans in Congress from those states.
Oops, sorry, forgot this was a baseball blog and not a politics blog, let’s start over.
What Daniel Murphy has done this post-season is as unexpected as it is remarkable. He hit his sixth home run of the post-season, breaking a 1-1 tie in the 3rd inning to lead the Mets to a 5-2 victory over the Chicago Cubs, giving them a 3-0 series lead, putting the New Yorkers one win away from their first World Series appearance since 2000. This is not Reggie Jackson here. I feel like a broken record writing that Murphy is simply NOT a home run hitter. He is 30 years old, he has played 7 season in Major League Baseball, and he has a total of 62 regular season home runs in 3,619 plate appearances. That is a rate of one home run for every 58 career plate appearances. In 34 plate appearances against the Dodgers and Cubs, Murph has 6 home runs in 34 plate appearances, which is one very 5.7 times to the plate, a rate better than Babe Ruth by a factor of 2 (in both the regular season and World Series). Murphy has now hit 6 of the Mets’ 11 post-season home runs so far, which is more than HALF for the Murph.
How appropriate that a man named Murphy is leading the Mets’ charge to the World Series. The late Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Murphy was the radio voice of the Metropolitans for 42 years, starting in their inaugural season of 1962 until he retired after the 2003 season. To my knowledge, the Mets never had a player named Murphy during Bob’s tenure as the voice of the Mets but you can be certain that he would be saying something like this: “Oooooh, there’s nothing I like more than watching Daniel Murphy hit home runs in October.”
Certainly, Murphy was not a one-man show Tuesday night. Once again, 2nd year pitcher Jacob deGrom was brilliang, winning his third straight post-season start. He’s now struck out 27 batters and yielded just 4 runs in 20 post-season innings, with wins in Games 1 and 5 against the Dodgers and Game 3 against the Cubs. Just as he did in Game 5 in Los Angeles, deGrom battled through early struggles to get the ball deep into the game (he tossed 7 innings of 2-run ball) and shorten the distance from starting pitcher to Mariano-esque closer Jeurys Familia. This seemed impossible for deGrom after a strenuous 29-pitch inning but he settled down afterwards and got the job done.
So it’s on to Game 4. In the history of 7-game series in Major League Baseball (the World Series since 1903 and the LCS since 1985), there have been 31 teams that have taken a 3 game to none series lead. Of those 31 teams, 30 of them went on to win the series. There has only been one team that ever came back from a 3-0 series deficit. Of course that team was another cursed team, the Boston Red Sox, who exorcised the Curse of the Bambino by winning four straight games against the New York Yankees in 2004 to advance to the Series and their first World title since 1918. The Cubs have a deeper curse: they haven’t even BEEN to the Fall Classic since 1945 and haven’t won it since 1908, yes that’s 1908, Teddy Roosevelt’s last year as President of the United States.
Looking forward to Game 4 tomorrow night!
Thanks for reading!
Chris Bodig