DENVER – Perhaps the single most difficult thing about baseball – for the players, coaches, GMs, and especially fans – is the inevitable slumps that come with the grind of a 162-game season.
And just like with the people watching from the stands or at home, it can be easy for a player to look at results from small sample sizes and reach erroneous conclusions, especially at the beginning of the season when those samples are all you have and the scoreboard readouts are showing some ugly numbers.
But Daniel Murphy has been down this road before and he knows where it leads.
“The scoreboard is not your identity,” he says.
Murphy may be sidelined with an injury, a not insignificant part of why the Colorado Rockies offense has struggled in the early going, but the club would still do well to soak up the wisdom he dispenses.
“You have to take a step back and look at it a little deeper and ask why we are not scoring runs,” he explains. “Are we giving ourselves enough chances consistently and just unfortunately not getting runs in.”
“The first game against the Dodgers, I thought we gave ourselves chances the first four or five innings. Trevor hits a ball right on the button that could have easily been a two-run triple. But then you have to look at other ballgames and ask if we are only giving ourselves one chance. As long as we keep making chances, it’s gonna break eventually.”
The meantime can be frustrating, he admits: “We want to be rewarded for our good approach with base hits and success and production and it’s easy when you’re not getting that to want to make an adjustment when it’s not necessary.”
A younger player without the long resume of Murphy might be tempted to react to poor results by making changes, but if they don’t understand what needs to be improved upon specifically, they can find themselves running in quicksand.
“As you spend a little bit more time around the game you become a bit more seasoned. You know that there are ebbs and flows to every season,” Murphy says. “You also take a realistic look at what your ‘struggles’ look like. If you’re going through the process and executing your plan and hitting the ball hard and you’re just not having anything to show for it that’s a lot different than not having a plan or not executing a plan.”
So, is it ever a good time to panic, I ask.
“To me panic is just a word that people use to describe how much guys want to succeed for themselves and for their teammates,” Murphy replies.
Mark Reynolds can recall those days when an ill-timed slump affected him a lot more than they do now.
“It took me a while,” he says of realizing the need for patience. “When you’re young, you think the world is ending.”
It can be even worse this time of year.
“Psychologically you can mess with you,” he says about looking up at the scoreboard and seeing some thin batting averages. “You go to for 2-for-12 in June no big deal but now you’re like ‘I’m hitting like .100.’ If we had the stretch we’re having now in August no one would say anything about it. The most over analyzed the time in baseball is the opening week and September.”
That doesn’t mean that these games or at-bats are meaningless though. “You obviously want to get off to a good start,” he says, “But the guys have been around long enough to know that we’re fine. A 3-for-4 here and a 2-for-4 there and you’re right back where you need to be.”
That’s certainly the case for players like Charlie Blackmon, Nolan Arenado, and Trevor Story, but the injury bug has forced Colorado to reach deep into their reserves, suddenly sporting a starting lineup that boasts plenty of exciting young players but little experience.
On Tuesday against Atlanta, the Rockies rolled out a lineup featuring Yonathan Daza, Raimel Tapia, Josh Fuentes, and Garrett Hampson batting first, second, sixth, and seventh respectively. Those players have a combined 357 MLB plate appearances, most coming from Tapia’s 264.
Murphy and Reynolds have a combined 11,259.
And the door is always open, says Murphy. “I don’t think guys are necessarily going out of there way to talk to me. As an offensive unit, you’re having dialogue with each other. So, David [Dahl] and I had a really good conversation today about his approach and what he was looking to do in there and his plan. It’s not something where they’re running over to me to talk hitting but we have a dialogue, which I think is a back-and-forth.”
In a conversation earlier this season, Murphy spoke about the potential of the lineup being a big part of the reason he chose Colorado in the first place.
“I think it’s a really talented group,” he said, “when we get going, we can handle anybody.”
Of course, they haven’t gotten going.
But they will, Reynolds says, not by focusing on the gigantic task of turning the offense into an immediate powerhouse, but by doing all the little things right.
“You can’t try to hit a three-run home run with nobody on base. You gotta take the little victories. Win at-bats, start winning innings, and we’ll be fine.”
