The title of this article could be taken in two drastically different ways. The first could be viewed as a celebration, with fall meaning autumn, and talk about how one man singlehandedly dumped two heavily favored teams out of the postseason with each clobbering of the baseball. The other would be much more a statement of lament. In that case it would be the description of a man on the highest of highs who came crashing back down to Earth in the most inopportune and unfortunate of circumstances. Both fully encompass the October of baseball put forth by Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy. He is a man without a town now after being the talk of it for three scintillating October weeks. How did we get to this point?
Daniel Murphy entered the postseason looking to make a statement. His regular season was slightly a cut above a typical Murphy campaign. He hit his usual average (.281 in 2015, .288 lifetime) but hit a career high in home runs with 14. His 73 runs batted in and 38 doubles are just below his career bests for a single season, but are looked on with higher regard seeing how he only played in 130 games. His numbers put him in line for a Silver Slugger in the National League, but in a down year for second baseman that wouldn’t be the resume boost he would need to secure the big deal he would want in his impending free agency.
Oh, did I forget to mention that it was a contract year for Murphy? My sincerest of apologies. Yes, Daniel Murphy entered 2015 in the final year of arbitration eligibility making $8 million for the year. Not a bad chunk of change for a player, but everybody involved in baseball that the first post-arbitration contract is where one needs to make their biggest payday. Murphy is just over 30 years old, which isn’t necessarily a deterrent to big spending clubs, but it is a determining factor into his next contract’s length as more and more teams become more stringent in their dealings with free agents. Murphy would need something else to cement his claim to a hefty deal. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, he was doing just that.
The Mets took on the Dodgers in the first round and were underdogs with the Cy Young duo of Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke poised to start the first two games of the series at Chavez Ravine. By the time the series got back to New York, it was supposed to be a formality, a means to an end. Daniel Murphy threw a gigantic monkey wrench into the “supposed to” machine that was the NLDS. He took Kershaw, a man who struck out a league best 301 batters and gave up just five home runs to lefties in a league high 232 2/3 innings, deep twice in two games. He parked a satellite shot off Zack Greinke, a man who had just finished a season with the lowest ERA the NL has seen in twenty years and a WHIP that ranked 15th in the HISTORY OF THE SPORT. The Mets won the series in five games with Murphy’s home run off Greinke providing the winning margin in the penultimate game. To say Daniel Murphy was hot would be like calling the surface of the sun tepid. The thing was he was only just getting started.
The free swinging left hander kept his barrage going against the Cubs, another team coming into the series as heavy favorites after dismantling the NL leading Cardinals. The Cubs also had the entire non-orange and blue wearing country behind them with the reference from Back to the Future II saying the lovable losers would take home the Commissioner’s Trophy. However, they fell to the now mightier lumber of Daniel Murphy just like the Dodgers did. First up was two time World Series champion and noted postseason virtuoso Jon Lester. Murphy opened the scoring with a dinger in an eventual game one win. Next on the docket was Major League wins leader and the third horse in the three horse NL Cy Young Race, Jake Arrieta. The tune was the same for Arrieta as he served up a first inning tater and the Mets never looked back to go up 2-0 in the series. Murphy would also hit home runs in the next two games, both Mets wins, giving the Mets a clean NLCS sweep and himself a six game homering streak breaking the record set by Carlos Beltran in 2004.
It was a run that dreams were built on. Murphy had homered in two consecutive games once in his entire career prior to this postseason, never mind in six straight off such a parade of pitching royalty. He was predictably named the NLCS MVP raking .529/.556/1.294 with those four home runs in the series and was on his way to the bank. Nobody could stop Daniel Murphy. He was on the front page of every website and even the cover of Sports Illustrated (though some believe that to be a curse rather than a blessing). The World Series loomed. The biggest stage to make the biggest impact. Sadly for Murphy, it was also the biggest stage to become the biggest goat.
The Fall Classic was anything but for Murphy and the Mets. Murphy would hit just .150 for the Series with none of his hits going for extra bases. He looked overmatched against a Royals pitching staff that couldn’t even in their wildest fantasies hope to boast the star power of the two teams Murphy marauded in the National League bracket. Even with their playoff hero’s cape being tattered, the Mets were only down one game in the series and were on their way to tying it up in Game 4. That is when Murphy’s fall became a plummet.
After Tyler Clippard walked two men in the bottom of the eighth, Jeurys Familia came on to stop the bleeding. He too was a man who had been impeccable throughout the playoffs before Alex Gordon took the wind out of his sails in Game 1. The Mets had a one run lead and the means to protect it. That was until Murphy had his moment. His Bill Buckner moment. His Alex Gonzalez moment. His Leon Durham moment. Eric Hosmer’s bounding chopper dipped under his glove and the game was tied. The Royals would pile on two more in the inning and the game was sunk. For all intents and purposes the series was sunk. Like many tend to forget, Buckner’s error didn’t immediately lose the series for the Red Sox in 1986. They had to gag away a Game 7 to keep his blunder emblazoned in the memories of Red Sox fans forever. The Mets had the same thing happen to them in Game 5. A second blown save for Familia and a complete meltdown in the 12th inning meant that Murphy’s error would find itself enshrined in the pantheon of plays that will never be forgotten for all the wrong reasons.
In closing, Daniel Murphy still has a chance to get paid this winter. There are plenty of general managers with poor spending habits that could make him a very wealthy man. However, the narrative of his final showcase entering free agency was one that was tragic. He was Casey At The Bat except instead of striking out the Mighty Casey had a ball slip under his glove. Everybody likes to root for the underdog and that was the role that both Murphy and the Mets played perfectly. Those same people however get just as much enjoyment from keeping the wounds fresh when that underdog becomes roadkill.