A baseball life

One of the wonders of the game is the occasion when a relatively unknown and unheralded player has an at-bat, game or a season when, for a moment, they do something that defines their career - no matter how modest the achievements before or after.  For Tom Murphy, the M's backup catcher, the last few games maybe such a moment.  Quite possibly in his next game he'll return to the relative obscurity where he has labored over his last four major league seasons; just as possibly, at the age of 28, in the gentle summer of Seattle, it has finally all come together.

Honestly, before yesterday, I knew next to nothing about Murphy.  A tour through his stats tell a baseball story.  The important thing is he's hit four home runs and driven in 8 in his last three games.  Since May 26 he's batting .423.  En fuego!

Before that?  He came out of SUNY Buffalo and spent all his professional career in the Rockies organization until this spring.  The Giants picked him up on waivers in March who traded him four days later to the M's, two games into their first homestand.  The next day he started against Boston, got a single and two walks in four PAs.  Since then he is batting .304 with seven homers in 79 ABs.  That's a most credible .950 OPS.

You can see since 2015, he's had a couple of cups of coffee with Colorado, usually hitting in the .220s, with streaky flashes around .275, consistent with his minor league performance.  His last couple of call-ups were less impressive.  Hitting 1 for 22 in August in September may explain how he hit the waiver wire at the end of spring training.  He couldn't make the team and was out of options.  Contemporary reporting said the Rockies felt injuries and underperformance kept him from not fulfilling their hopes when he was drafted on the first round.

Well, he's here now and he's hitting like the Rockies hoped he would.  Hard to say how long the spotlight will shine, but he and we can enjoy it while we can.