Sean Murphy Building Up for Braves in Rehab Assignment, Still Hitless

The Atlanta Braves All-Star catcher is slowly getting conditioned for major-league action, and he's still searching for that first hit of his rehab assignment

Murphy caught for Spencer Strider and saw action in Triple-A | Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images

Sean Murphy conditioned himself further on Thursday night with Triple-A Gwinnett. The Atlanta Braves catcher is up to catching seven innings behind the dish.

It pushed him up another inning from his last rehab game back on Tuesday. He’s slowly moving his way up to a full game’s workload. He’s still not playing every day. We’ll have to see if that impacts his timeline or not.

He’s not going to be playing every single day with the Braves, but there are going to likely be consecutive games that he sees action. Maybe he’ll start playing a string of games in a row once he’s up to nine for a game.

Murphy is expected to be back in early May. The start of the month is still a week away. He can still make some solid strides before then.

While he progresses behind the dish, we await to see how he looks in the batter’s box. Murphy went hitless again (0-for-3) in his latest game. Between his time in Rome and Gwinnett, he’s now 0-for-15 with a walk across 18 plate appearances.

He said back on Tuesday that his at-bats are starting to get better. In time, we’ll see how it translates to hits.

“Just trying to get it down right,” Murphy said on Tuesday about his swing.

Murphy went down with season-ending hip surgery back in September. It required surgery, and he’s been building back up since. It was known by December that he wasn’t going to start the season on time, and he didn’t see action in any spring training games.

The 2023 All-Star had his moments last season when he was healthy. Through July 31, he was batting .233 with an .823 OPS, 16 home runs and 42 RBIs. If that had been his stat line when the season ended, many would have been satisfied with that.

In the final month before he underwent surgery, he went 4-for-59, with six walks and three RBIs. So before looking at the overall .199 average and the .709 OPS and drawing a conclusion about last season, keep the splits in mind.

How he will perform this season is to be determined. Being hitless in Triple-A brings on some concern, but the hips are an important part of the swing. It makes sense to an extent. He’s still recently back to playing in live action. Light swings in the cages aren’t the same thing. It may be some time before we know for sure where he’s truly at.    

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