Could Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy miss the entire season?
Washington Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy does not appear close to returning, so is there a chance he misses the entire season?
Right after last season ended, Washington Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy had microfracture surgery on his right knee. An original target return date of mid-April seemed a little aggressive, and he didn’t even start a minor league rehab assignment until late-May. But the news is not particularly good right now, with Nationals manager Dave Martinez suggesting Murphy is “still a ways” from returning.
Going a little further, according Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post, a scout said Murphy has looked “gimpy” during his rehab assignment with Double-A Harrisburg. More specifically, per the scout, he has made four errors on the rehab assignment, is “struggling to move laterally” and is lacking “straight-ahead speed.”
Murphy’s not exactly a speedster, with nine stolen bases on 14 attempts over the last three seasons. Even his defense is not stellar, with a cumulative Defensive WAR of -2.2 over his two seasons with the Nationals. But Murphy appears to be struggling with functional baseball movements on a knee that is not nearly healthy.
Here's some spliced video off the MiLB feed from the last two days...tell me he looks healthy...in the first one, he struggles to even get to a routine grounder and then can't get anything on the throw off his right leg pic.twitter.com/tg0Gnw6nuY
— Mick Reinhard (@Mayflies) June 3, 2018
Microfracture knee surgery is no joke, clearly. But is there a chance Murphy misses this entire season?
Murphy has been what (and maybe more than) the Nationals envisioned he’d be as an offensive player. Over the 2016 and 2017 seasons, he averaged a .334/.387/.569 slash-line (.956 OPS) with 24 home runs, 98 RBI, 45 doubles and 303 total bases per campaign. Not surprisingly, he was good for a combined 10.1 in Offensive WAR (via Baseball Reference) over those two seasons.
With Howie Kendrick (right Achilles) also out, surely for the season, Wilmer Difo has started every game at second base for the Nationals since mid-May. Over that 17-game stretch, he’s hitting .210 (13-for-62) with one home run, four RBI and 10 runs scored. Just about any second baseman is a big drop-off from a healthy Murphy at the plate, and to a lesser degree from Kendrick too, but Difo’s recent OPS is nearly 400 points less than what Murphy averaged in 2016 and 2017.
Outside of Bryce Harper, Washington has been piecing together an offense around injuries and disappointing performance all season. Entering Monday they’re leading the National League in home runs (75) and stolen bases (46), and they’re basically league average in every thing else except batting average (.234; 11th).
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So if Murphy happens to miss the entire season, which is a long way from becoming a declared reality, the Nationals seem likely to survive somehow.