Why Trading Sean Murphy Would Be a Disaster for the Braves

Few teams can match Atlanta’s strength at catcher. Subtracting from it would be a mistake.

The 2021 season did a number on Alex Anthopoulos.

Sure, he learned some lessons there - don’t be afraid to rework your outfield on the fly, don’t underestimate what one loud personality can do to a flat clubhouse, and hoisting a World Series championship trophy is pretty nice.

But he also learned that you can never have enough catching depth.

Executing any of the fan and aggregator-proposed trades of veteran Sean Murphy, either at the deadline or this offseason, would be a massive mistake, one I’m confident Anthopoulos won’t make.

Let’s talk about it.

How bad was 2021, exactly?

The catching situation back in 2021 couldn’t have been that bad, right? I mean, Travis d’Arnaud was back by October and caught every inning en route to Atlanta’s World Series win over Houston.

Well, for the executive who had to patch together a catching corps during a slog of a season, it was that bad. As AA told me in a media availability after Atlanta was eliminated by the Padres last year:

“I think we all learned through ‘21. We went through what, eight guys? Or whatever it was. I don’t want to live through that again. I like having that depth.”

To Alex’s point, the Braves used seven different catchers in the 2021 season to get through 161¹ regular-season games.

Travis d’Arnaud: 56 games
William Contreras: 48 games
Kevan Smith: 29 games
Stephen Vogt: 22 games
Alex Jackson: 9 games
Jeff Mathis: 3 games
Jonathan Lucroy: 2 games

Ever since then, the organization’s been virtually paranoid about depth, carrying additional veteran catchers in Gwinnett every season and aggressively splitting time between their major league options. That mindset hasn’t changed, as Anthopoulos made clear just recently in an interview with Dukes & Bell on 92.9 The Game:

“For the catching position […] I view the position as a two-person position. There is no catcher, I believe, in the history of baseball - as least current (modern) baseball that I know for sure - that will play 162 (games), or even 142². Just doesn’t happen, right? You’re likely going to do 100 games, maybe 110, 115 on the high end, and there’s a high likelihood of getting injured, right? Foul tips, collisions, not that you’re supposed to collide, and all that type of stuff. You’re always going to have day game after night game and all that stuff and so on.”

AA closed that part of the interview with a great analogy to a sport that the two hosts were intimately familiar with: football.

“It’s a little bit like the NFL - We have Bijan (Robinson, running back for the Atlanta Falcons), who gets the majority of the carries, but […] it’s a two-person position. They’re both valuable and I personally view it as critically important to have two.”

So, it feels pretty likely that Anthopoulos doesn’t trade Murphy this winter. But let’s talk about WHY keeping both, outside of injury depth, is a good move.

They have clear and distinct roles

Sean Murphy is consistently one of MLB’s best defensive catchers, while Drake Baldwin is already one of the team’s best hitters.³

Murphy’s above-average in every component of catcher defense, per Statcast. His ‘weakness’ is pop time at only a 57th percentile mark of 1.95 seconds, but everything else is among the top quartile in the league - 75th percentile Blocks Above Average and Framing, along with an 80th percentile Caught Stealing Above Average.

(As all three of those are rate stats, it’s entirely likely that Murphy continues to rise as he gets more starts behind the plate. A quick glance at some of those leaderboards shows that while Murphy has 1,435 pitches caught going into last night’s game, most everyone ahead of him is somewhere between 1800-1900 pitches.)

Drake Baldwin’s not bad at many of those defensive metrics, mind you, just not as good as Murphy. Baldwin’s Blocking and Caught Stealing Above Average are both at zero, meaning he’s been the textbook definition of average in that area, and his Framing is slightly positive at +1 Run Value.

But drilling down even farther, even the different strengths of these two behind the plate complement each other. Baldwin’s better at stealing low strikes than Murphy, while Murphy excels on everything on the glove side. On blocking, Baldwin struggles with short dirt balls on the glove side and low pitches to the arm side. Murphy, by contrast, can get got on balls that bounce in front of the plate but excels on short hops in every direction. And their pop times are (surprisingly) exactly the same at 1.95 seconds, although how they get there is different: Baldwin makes a faster exchange, while Murphy has a harder throw.

Among things we can’t entirely quantify, my impression is that Murphy calls a better game than Baldwin, although Drake’s not a slouch in that regard. Murphy just better understands when to go back to the well of a pitch/location combo that works versus when to change it up and throw something unexpected (or in an unexpected location).

It’s a competitive advantage not to have a significant drop-off between your catchers behind the plate.

There’s not much of a drop-off at the plate, either. Baldwin is outproducing Murphy on the slash, with a .274/.352/.474 line that outperforms Murphy’s .230/.315/.489, although Murphy has 13 homers and 31 RBI to Baldwin’s 10 homers/28 RBI.

There’s opportunity for both to play

Baldwin has gotten exactly two starts at designated hitter this season, while Murphy has one.

I expect that to change.

One of Atlanta’s roster weaknesses in recent years has been an inability to utilize the designated hitter spot to either get some veterans a “half-day” or to squeeze a hot bat into the lineup. But with Marcell Ozuna a pending free agent and unlikely to be re-signed this offseason, that can change.

There’s a blueprint here already: 2022. Young phenom William Contreas made 57 starts behind the plate, but actually made the All-Star Game as a designated hitter after getting 34 starts there that season.

Here’s what I can imagine for a playing time distribution, assuming six games in a week - four behind the plate for Murphy, two for Baldwin, with each player sitting once a week out of the DH role for Atlanta to give someone (likely Ronald Acuña Jr. or Jurickson Profar) a “half-day” without defensive duties. That’s five games a week for Murphy, five games for Baldwin, and one game to float around the rest of the roster.

The one negative to this plan, other than potentially running the catchers down over the course of the long season, is the roster moves required to make this work. Under MLB rules, if your DH enters the field, you lose the DH for the rest of the game - a risk if one catcher gets hurt mid-game. Any sort of in-game injury would require the Braves to use pinch-hitters instead of the other catcher as the DH for the rest of that contest. Does Atlanta feel content to carry a third catcher on the major league roster that might, at best, sub in for defense late after a pinch-runner came in for Murphy or Baldwin?

We’ve already seen the benefits of having two quality catchers

Entering Tuesday’s action, Atlanta’s 2.0 Wins Above Average from their catchers is 4th in baseball. Looking at the teams ahead of them does nothing but confirm our assertion that the hard platoon is the best option, unless you have a generational talent having a generational year:

1st: Chicago Cubs at 2.6 WAA
T-2: Los Angeles Dodgers at 2.5 WAA
T-2: Seattle Mariners at 2.5 WAA

The Cubs have gotten fantastic contributions from the combo of veteran Carson Kelly (.268 average, 11 homers) and youngster Miguel Amaya (.280 average & 25 RBI in just 27 games). The Dodgers are carried by Will Smith (NL-bests with a .332 average, .434 on-base, and .991 OPS), while the Mariners are powered by Cal Raleigh’s MLB-leading 35 homers and AL-leading 74 RBI.

Several teams with good catchers place below Atlanta due to the quality of their backups, with Milwaukee’s William Contreras putting up 2.0 WAR in a relative down-year for him while his backup Eric Haase has just 0.1 and Boston’s Carlos Narváez has his 2.7 WAR more than offset by backup Connor Wong’s -0.5.

There aren’t many other injury options right now

But were you to make a trade of Sean Murphy, Atlanta could be right in with Boston or Milwaukee. And even more importantly, as Anthopoulos pointed out, catchers get hurt all the time. Murphy’s gone to the injured list twice since being traded to Atlanta and dealt with heat-related fatigue down the stretch in 2023.

One more injury and Atlanta’s stuck with starting either optionable veteran Jason Delay or veteran Sandy León, both currently dividing the catching duties in Gwinnett. Sure, the Braves could sign a higher-quality backup, but why? Drake Baldwin’s already making just the league minimum and Murphy’s contract isn’t that onerous - $12.2M AAV, just the 8th-largest contract figure this season.

In a league where catching depth is often the difference between surviving a season and scrambling through one, keeping both Sean Murphy and Drake Baldwin isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. Atlanta has the rare advantage of two capable, complementary catchers. There’s no need to complicate that by trading one away.

1. Game 162, a make-up game against the Colorado Rockies that had been rescheduled due to rain, was cancelled after the league determined it would have no impact on the standings. Fun fact: The Braves have NEVER won the World Series in a 162-game season. 1914 & 1957 were prior to the expansion to 162, while 1995 was only 144 games due to the 1994 strike.

2. The last player to catch 150 games in a season was Brad Ausmus for Detroit in 2000 (just the fifth time it had happened since 1980), although he only started 140 of those. Based on the starts technicality, we’re going to give this one to Anthopoulos.

3. Which isn’t as high of praise this season as it has been in years past.