Manuel Hands Murphy Starting Job… Already?
Last week, Mets manager Jerry Manuel made some roster decisions for the Mets ’09 team. One of them was naming second year player Daniel Murphy as starting left fielder. Murphy hit .319 last year in limited action, but was certainly expected to have to vie for his starting outfield job along with everyone else, including Ryan Church, Fernando Tatis, and Carlos Beltran.
Much ado is being made of Manuel’s decision by fans and the talking heads who wonder how Manuel could have made such a decision before a single spring game has even been played. Here is how MLB.com’s Marty Noble answers the critics of Manuel’s decision:
The decision and the timing of it did raise my eyebrows. But Manuel was quite impressed by Murphy last summer. I am a pretty firm believer in what Davey Johnson used to say — that jobs are neither won nor lost in exhibition games; that is that managers almost always have a sense of what they want before the first exhibition game pitch. So why not implement the plan at the beginning?
The most important thing to remember is that if Church or Tatis play better than Murphy early on, then he will be replaced in the outfield. Moreover, in baseball everyone on the team gets a chance to play throughout the season, so naming a starter now, will not have long-lasting effects. If you are a Mets ticket holder, you may be seeing several different faces out there in August as the ones you see in April.