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They have already given up on the latter acquisition. John Hicks was placed on waivers to make room for Jose Berrios and was immediately claimed by the Tigers, leaving Minnesota with two catchers on the 40-man roster. One is Kurt Suzuki, who is likely in his last year with the Twins. The other is John Ryan Murphy, who is off to an utterly miserable start in his new uniform.
When they traded Aaron Hicks for Murphy during the offseason, the Twins were hopeful that the improving 24-year-old backstop, a former prep star and second-round draft pick, could develop into a fixture behind the plate. Instead, he just looks like a player that badly needs to be fixed.
Murphy was slow to get going in spring training. Given the lion's share of reps at catcher, he collected just five singles in 36 at-bats for a .139 average.
"It's timing more than anything," said Joe Vavra, a former hitting instructor turned bench coach, when asked about the newcomer's struggles at the time.
Timing still appears to be Murphy's primary issue, and I'm not talking about the poor timing of batting .086 in your first month when trying to make an impression on a new organization and fanbase.
In April, Murphy put up a dreadful .225 OPS and it wasn't because opposing pitchers were flat-out overwhelming him. He struck out only five times in 38 plate appearances, but still managed just three hits – a pair of singles and a ground ball double.
His BABIP currently stands at .100, meaning he is only getting a hit on one out of 10 balls he puts into play. It's not hard to see why when you look at his batted ball data; Murphy has hit a grounder or fly ball almost 90 percent of the time, with a meager 10.3 percent line drive rate. That is a rather blatant indication that his timing is off, and he's not quite squaring up the ball. The best way to resolve that problem is with regular at-bats.
Murphy hasn't gotten those. Only once has he started consecutive games and usually he's been on the bench for multiple days between appearances. It's a bit of a hard sell to suggest that a guy whose batting average starts with zero should be playing more regularly, but I believe that would be the best course for Paul Molitor at this point. Murphy is bound to start collecting some hits and even if he doesn't you're not losing all that much by taking Kurt Suzuki's bat out of the lineup. Plus, additional rest could only be beneficial for the veteran, who has logged more than 9,000 MLB innings at catcher and routinely takes a beating.
The other option for ramping up Murphy's at-bat count would be to send him to the minors, where he could start everyday, but unfortunately the aforementioned decision to waive Hicks leaves the Twins with no readily available replacement. In order to demote Murphy, another catcher would need to be added to the 40-man.
Stuart Turner and Mitch Garver, the two best catching prospects in the system (faint praise), are both at Double-A and batting around .250. Neither belongs in the majors right now. The current starter in Rochester is Juan Centeno, a 26-year-old non-prospect with a .589 OPS at Triple-A. Unless Ryan can pull off a trade or salvage something off of the waiver wire, there's really no feasible option for replacing Murphy, not to mention Suzuki if he got injured.
It's a bad situation, and there aren't any great options. But the Twins saw something in Murphy, and so now they might as well give him some more regular exposure to find out if it can emerge. Given the alternatives, they really need it to.
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