David Wright and Daniel Murphy – Luck or Ability?

We’ve noted recently how David Wright continues to lead the league in BABIP at .418, well above his career mark of .350.  Its interesting to note this difference despite the following breakdown of his batted balls from the past two seasons:

	AVG	BABIP	Line Drive %	Fly Ball %	Ground Ball %
2008	.302	.328	25.6%	38.2%	36.2%
2009	.316	.418	25.1%	36.9%	38.0%

So, despite hitting the same distribution of line drives, grounders, and fly balls, Wright is seeing a lot more balls fall in this season, which (again) suggests that his solid batting average this season is being driven by good luck while his actual performance is rating much worse than 2008 (especially when his complete loss of home run power is factored in).

What Wright is doing is interesting when compared to Daniel Murphy. Lets look at the same chart for Murphy:

	AVG	BABIP	Line Drive %	Fly Ball %	Ground Ball %
2008	.313	.386	33.3%	25.5%	41.2%
2009	.241	.265	18.5%	41.6%	39.9%

In Murphy’s case we’ve seen his BABIP fall quite a bit from ‘08 to ‘09, but we also see that he’s hitting far fewer line drives and more fly balls.

This article suggests that, in general, 79% of flyballs are caught for outs, compared to only 26% of line drives. 

So the difference with Murphy is more than just the seemingly random chance that has caused variations in David Wright’s performance.  With Murphy, he just doesn’t seem to be making the same quality of contact as he did in 2008.  Murphy had around 150 plate appearances in ‘08 and around another 300 in ‘09, so small sample sizes may still be at play, but we really haven’t seen Murphy recreate anything like his hot streak in 2008 so far this season. 

And unfortunately, this 2009 Daniel Murphy is simply not an adequate Major League starter.  His line (.308 OBP, .352 SLG, .660 OPS) is vaguely similar to the following:

• Elvis Andrus’ 2009 season (.315/.346/.661)
• Manny Trillo’s Career (.316/.345/.661)
• Luis Lopez’ 1997 season for the Mets (.317/.341/.658)

I’m pretty sure that the Mets don’t want the equivalent of Manny Trillo or 1997 Luis Lopez manning first base for them going forward – Daniel Murphy needs to step it up.