Murphy Biding his Time Before Making his First Swing

Rookie A's catcher Sean Murphy, coming off knee surgery, got his first two plate appearances Monday night but never swung the bat. He can wait.

Ask any big-league hitter in spring training, and it’s almost a certainty that he’ll say he’s trying to look at more pitchers this time around.

In the era of Moneyball and the time of the elevated importance of on-base percentage, that’s no surprise.

A’s rookie catcher Sean Murphy might have taken it to a bit of an extreme, however. After sitting out the first 10 games of the Cactus League season, Murphy was in the lineup Monday night against the Cubs and came to the plate twice in the A’s 5-2 win.

The bat never left his shoulder. He saw nine pitches, eight of which were balls, and he walked twice. After 10 days off, to take all those pitches, that’s impressive.

“Just to get out there and see some pitches was helpful,” Murphy told the A’s media scrum. “I wanted to swing, but the at-bats didn’t let me, so be it.”

For a guy with just 20 big leagues to his credit, that kind of understanding of the swing vs. the strike zone is one of the many things the A’s like about Murphy. Most players held out of Cactus League play until the first week of March would have been hacking.

Manager Bob Melvin was impressed.

“(There’s) no doubt he’s advanced,” Melvin said. “We have a number of young players brought up in the middle of a pennant race (in 2019). It’s one thing to be in the big leagues. It’s one thing just to be a September callup. But when he’s asked to be a starter down the stretch in the pennant race, it means we have a lot of faith in him.”

Murphy’s game Monday was his first since October knee surgery. He said on the day he reported to camp Feb. 14 that he wasn’t feeling any problems with the left knee, but the A’s weren’t about to take any chances with the player they see as their regular starting catcher, even given his lack of Major League experience.

So, he worked on the side and didn’t get into a game until Monday night.

“Everything’s good,’ Murphy said. “I wasn’t thinking about (the knee), so that’s all I can ask. I thought it went pretty well. I had some good arms to catch. It was a challenge right off the bat.”

In his first four innings, Murphy was on the receiving end of pitches from Frankie Montas, Lou Trivino, and Liam Hendriks, all of whom are going to be fixtures in the 2020 Oakland pitching corps. It was the first time in a game that Murphy had caught Montas.

“He’s good,” Montas said of Murphy after his two scoreless innings. “He knows what he’s doing behind the plate.”