AJ Murray - 2016

[goulik]

Catcher

Born April 4, 1993

Drafted 2015 14th Round from Georgia Tech

288/397/424 at Elizabethton last year.

Threw out 32% of base runners last year

Murray will begin the year in Cedar Rapids

[goulik]

Murray was 2 for 4 with his 3rd home run last night. His slash is improving as he now sits at 247/378/438 and he leads the team with 12 RBI's

[goulik]

Copied and pasted from Seths hitter of the month honorable mentions:

C AJ Murray (Cedar Rapids) - .231/.370/.400 (.770). 15-65 with five doubles, two homers and 10 RBI.

 

Hopefully May will end with more than honorable mention.

[goulik]

AJ had a great Friday the 13th going 5 for 5 plus a walk, 2 home runs, 5 RBI and 5 Runs. He is our TD MiLB hitter of the day. His hitting numbers have taken off since my last update. 299/402/533 (935 OPS!! That's something to get excited about)

He still leads CR with 20 RBI and is tied for the lead in runs with17. LaMonte Wade has shown he deserves a promotion soon, I would argue that Murray has also.

[goulik]

AJ is your Twins daily MiLB player of the week. Seth wrote a nice post about his week in the minor league section of TD. Impressive fact: 16 of his 34 hits are for extra bases. Did I mention he's a catcher?

[Guest]

Interviewed AJ Murray and Sam Clay earlier this week and posted the article this afternoon. It's in the "blog" section here at TD and, of course, you can find it at Knuckleballs.

 

 

[goulik]

Season stats at 265/353/423 after hitting 158 over the last 10 games. His rough patch seems to align with Cedar Rapids recent swoon but I'm still a believer in this kid. This is still his first full season professional year and now has 52 more at bats than last year...

 

As a catcher, he has thrown out 20 of 54 would be base stealers and has only allowed 2 passed balls. He has committed 6 errors in 384 innings behind the dish for a .987 fpct

[Guest]

Murray was a late replacement on the West Division All Star team, but hit a big opposite-field home run in the 7th inning of the game.

 

Today, he was promoted to Fort Myers.

[goulik]

In 50 at bats in Fort Myers, AJ is hitting 260/327/460 which are similar to his final CR numbers 262/346/415. He has 5 two-baggers, a triple and a home run resulting in a higher slugging number but otherwise quite comparable.

[goulik]

AJ is still adjusting to the next level and He is not hitting. His FM slash is 195/284/305. He got off to a good start (see previous post) but he obviously needs to make some adjustments at this point. The problem is not Ks as his K rate has dropped at FM. In his last 10 games he has 5 hits in 34 at bats for a 147 batting average.

 

Nothing pops out to me looking at his defensive stats. He has not been throwing out people stealing bases at the same rate as at CR and he has the same number of passed balls in 173 fewer innings. His FPCT is 991.

[goulik]

2016 Wrap Up

After seeing AJ live in Cedar Rapids, I really fell in love with his offensive game. What I saw were a lot of hard hit balls and his stats the first half of the year reinforced what I saw. After hitting 262/346/415 with .761 OPS, he made an all star appearance, whacked the ball hard and moved up to Fort Meyers. Fort Meyers was not as kind to AJ as he hit 209/286/337 for a .623 OPS. In 435 combined innings he hit 26 doubles and 10 homers.

 

Defensively he knelt behind home plate for a total of 713.1 innings and held up a .989 FPCT. He allowed 11 Passed balls. AJ's ability to throw out runners disappeared in FM. In 2015, he threw out 32% and seemed to be doing the same in Cedar Rapids (22 of 62) but then only threw out 3 of 22 in FM.

 

2017 Outlook

Murray will start in High A and hopefully can repeat what he did this year. I would like to know what scouts, pitchers and coaches say about his defense, pitch framing, and game calling. Stats and a weekend eye test can only tell you so much. Murray could emerge as a real big Catching prospect in our future if he can do over a full season what he did the first half of this year.