#imwith28: June has arrived, who loves Daniel Murphy?

Hello.

I continue to stick to my guns.

All winter long I said y’all would love Dan Murphy come June.  It’s June.  He’s hitting.  This is the month you will come around.

Since I have been with 28 all along I enjoyed this from Howard Megdal yesterday (even though it uses those fancy advanced stats you kids like)

Daniel Murphy has settled in as a major league hitter right between his 2008 and 2009 numbers. For the year, he’s at .278/.337/.418, good for an OPS+ of 111. Unlike Turner, he’s done it with a sustainable BABIP of .299, right in line with his .302 career BABIP mark.

And while the conventional wisdom is that Turner has starred at second base while Murphy has erred, the defensive metrics actually like Murphy’s performance at the position a good bit more than Turner’s. This is not to say it is predictive, given the small sample. But it certainly doesn’t provide any evidence that Murphy can’t play second base, and it seems he’d be likelier to improve than regress as he becomes more familiar with the position.