And what was never in doubt was whether he hit well enough to stay at the position. Through 75 plate appearances, Murphy is posting a 130 OPS+, right around the 126 he gave the Mets last year. Among major league second basemen, that puts him fourth this year, behind only Ian Kinsler, Jose Altuve and Kelly Johnson. Again, 75 plate appearances isn’t enough to draw a conclusion, but Murphy now has 1205 of them in his major league career, and a 113 career OPS+ in those PAs. So we have a pretty good idea that Murphy is far better at the plate than the average 2B.
