Daniel Murphy’s Adventures in Left Field

One of the things about doing ATH each day is that, with the exception of Sunday games when I have a lot more time to read game stories and watch highlights, I have to pretty much talk about what’s in the box score. Which is fine, because I think the box score gets you an awful lot of the way home when it comes to a baseball game. It doesn’t, however, account for things like Daniel Murphy:

Maybe that’s the question on your minds after Tuesday’s 6-4 loss, another defeat triggered by a Daniel Murphy goof in left field. He took full responsibility after dropping Cody Ross’s fly ball on April 12, leading to two unearned runs, and he did so again after Tuesday’s game. Insofar that he should have caught Brendan Ryan’s liner instead of slipping and watching from his back as the ball zipped past . . .

. . . That play highlighted Murphy’s travails in left field Tuesday, which also included his throwing to third base instead of second on Rick Ankiel’s fifth-inning single. It allowed Ankiel to scamper to second and then score on Albert Pujols’s double.

Neither one of those things were technically errors, so they didn’t appear in the box score, but they made all the difference in the world. As does Daniel Murphy, a DH trapped in a leftfielder’s body.

I worry about him, frankly. At the very least he may lose his job, but if this keeps up, I also think there’s a distinct possibility that Johan Santana is going to march out to left one day and murder poor Daniel with his bare hands.