Thankfully, the Giants have other quality backup catchers in the fold.
Tom Murphy’s second stint with the San Francisco Giants (recall that he was claimed off waivers just before the start of the 2019 season, only to be waived a few days later) has felt doomed from the moment he inked the contract. After 13 games (38 PA) last season, he hit the IL with a left knee sprain.
We didn’t see him for the rest of the season.
This morning, Andrew Baggarly reported on Bluesky:
Bad news for the Tom Murphy fan club. He has a mid-back disc herniation and is getting an epidural. The Giants added minor league catcher Adrian Sugastey to major league camp.
One of my least endearing qualities as a baseball fan is my rush to judgment, but here I go anyway: Mark DeRosa, Tommy La Stella, and Tom Murphy walk into a bar — and are never seen again.
The recovery time for a herniated disc can be anywhere from 2-8 weeks, but could take up to 6 months to heal. To this point, Giants beat writer Maria Guardado adds:
Bob Melvin said it’s a “definite possibility” that Tom Murphy won’t be ready for Opening Day and will start the season on the IL. Sam Huff and Max Stassi are among the options to replace him as the club’s backup catcher.
These are a couple of good options, to be fair, so other than the money ($4 million in 25, a $250K buyout for 26), the Giants are in a good position and Murphy’s absence is no loss.
Of course, that’s easier said than done, as the Giants would sure like to find a way to not simply lose $4.25 million if they can help it. Even if they had to pay down $3 million of that, we saw their willingness to pay a pretty penny to excise even some of Taylor Rogers’ money. The problem is that Tom Murphy’s value today is entirely theoretical, and projections have to account for age (turns 34 on April 3) and injury (74 games played, 2022-2024). So, he’d have to come back healthy and perform — a tall task since the defensive metrics were already trending against him prior to his deal with the Giants. What he really had going for him was a power bat. I can’t imagine that power will survive back problems.
It’d be very easy to lump this in with the track record of poor decisions made by the previous front office and I just did it, so let’s move on.
The new group’s challenge will be figuring out what to do with him in a way that doesn’t cost $4 million. The Taylor Rogers deal suggests that they are trying to save money wherever they can. If they can’t move Murphy, I wonder if that increases the urgency to move Wilmer Flores ($3.5 million) or LaMonte Wade Jr. ($5 million) at some point in camp or early in the season if either of them are looking good. Of course there’s the Bryce Eldridge of it all, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the first base rotations the next few weeks.
I say this because I don’t think the Giants have demonstrated recently that they are willing to dump whole contracts. I believe the last time they did was with Zack Cosart. Edit: actually, as noted in the comments below, it was the aforementioned Tommy La Stella.
This is probably too many words about a backup catcher, one whose time with the team has been mainly forgettable.