Murphy OK off collapsed lung surgery
Sean Murphy arrived at Oakland A’s camp in Mesa on Sunday and immediately assured manager Bob Melvin he was feeling good. It’s been just a few months since Murphy underwent surgery for a collapsed lung.
“It sounded dramatic,” Murphy told his manager upon arrival to camp in Mesa. “But I feel great right now.”
Per doctors orders not to fly in the four weeks following surgery, Murphy drove from his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, to Mesa, Ariz., to report to camp. He isn’t allowed to do baseball activity yet, but the A’s can at least get an eye on him.
Murphy is coming off a stellar rookie campaign despite the shortened season. In his first 63 games as a big leaguer over the 2019 and 2020 seasons, Murphy put together an .846 OPS with 11 home runs and hard hit rates that rank among the game’s best (92.2 mph exit velocity and 49.4 hart hit rate in 2020). He also had a 17%
walk rate, which ranked n the 97th percentile in MLB.
Murphy demonstrated above average pitch framing abilities in 2020, too. Statcast estimates he saved three runs through his framing and converted 49% of non-swing pitches to strikes, ranked fifth in the league.
J.B. WENDELKEN’S ASCENT >> It wasn’t long ago — in 2018 and parts of the 2019 seasons — that Wendelken was trying to find his footing and confidence as a big leaguer. Flash forward to 2021 and Wendelken is a foundational piece in a strong A’s bullpen.
“Every year I say it’s about maturity level that came upon me,” Wendelken said in a Zoom call with reporters on Sunday. “Keeping within myself and not trying to overdo, relax and go about my business the right way. It was one of those things where I felt like I was putting a lot of pressure on myself early. That’s every rookie ever. But for me it was about staying true to you and staying simple.”
What happened in between that’s turned the 27-year-old right hander into a top reliever in baseball? Wendelken traces it back to one two-out outing against the St. Louis Cardinals in 2019. Still trying to shake some of the nerves that come with a player’s first few big league outings, Wendelken gave himself a calming talk.
“I needed to focus. I told myself that I had to just go out and eat some innings,” Wendelken said. “Go in there cool, calm, collected and just get through the innings.”
Wendelken, who’d been used a few times to eat innings in messy games, ended up throwing twothirds of an inning, including a strikeout. That was it.
“I was like, all right, that was a bit unordinary,” Wendelken said. A realization hit him after that outing, though. “I sat and looked at it and thought, ‘All right, this is what you have to do pretty much every time you’re out there.’ I felt like me telling myself that and noticing that was actually the spot that got me going.”
A few other adjustments factored into his success thereafter. Before that game against St. Louis, pitching coach Scott Emerson told Wendelken to start throwing his slider more. He had four grips — he had to pick one and start using it to get hitters off his fastball and changeup. He worked on it in Triple-A and came back up to the big leagues.