Ex-Mets Murphy, Turner remain on upswing
In the spring of 2011, the New York Mets’ recently revamped front office and new manager Terry Collins needed to settle on an opening-day second baseman and, after considerable debate, opted for a Rule 5 pick named Brad Emaus, freshly plucked from the Toronto Blue Jays organization.
The decision forced 26-year-old Daniel Murphy into a reserve role to start the season and dispatched Justin Turner, also 26, to Class AAA Buffalo. It hardly seemed an egregious misstep: Emaus, after all, would remain under the Mets’ control only if they kept him on the big-league roster, Murphy was new to the position and hadn’t performed well enough in his first two big-league seasons to secure an everyday job, and Turner was a waiver-wire pickup playing for his third organization with all of 35 major league at-bats under his belt.
Emaus lasted until mid-April before the club cut him. He never played in the majors again. Six years later, Murphy and Turner are among the best hitters in the National League. They’re no longer Mets and no longer teammates, but they remain friends and share the hunger for hitting knowledge that helped both achieve stunning midcareer offensive explosions.
This week, both were National League All-Stars — representing the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers, respectively.
“We talk all the time,” Turner said. “Text messages back and forth. It almost feels like we see each other every day. I went over to talk to him today, and we just went right into some hitting conversations, talking about different things, different feelings, and I’m sure we’ll have a lot more of those in the next couple of days.”
“Justin’s been fun to watch,” Murphy said. “I shoot him text messages when I see him play, but also he just got engaged to be married as well, so I shot him a congratulatory text for that. His fiancée and my wife are able to stay in close contact, too. The cool thing about Justin and my relationship is, it’s able to be rooted in baseball, but it’ll probably go beyond baseball.”
Though Murphy’s offensive surge has been perhaps better documented, Turner’s came first. Turner was promoted when Emaus got cut in 2011, and he spent three seasons serving as a reserve infielder in Flushing. In his third and final season with the Mets, he played with veteran outfielder Marlon Byrd, who told Turner about a private hitting instructor in California named Doug Latta, who helped Byrd revamp his swing and enjoy a resurgent season in 2013.
When the Mets cut Turner after the 2013 season, he owned a career .684 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS). He began work- ing with Latta and Byrd that winter and signed with the Dodgers in February 2014. Over the four seasons since, his OPS is .888. Before the 2017 season, he re-upped with Los Angeles on a four-year, $64 million deal.
“You have basically a team telling you you’re not good enough, and you want to prove that you are,” Turner said. “It would’ve been nice to play on an everyday basis early on in my career in New York, but then I wouldn’t have had the time to meet the people I did and make the adjustments I did with my swing, and I might have been out of the game before I got a chance to make those adjustments. Everything kind of happens for a reason.”
Says Murphy: “I don’t think there’s a level of surprise to it at all, because, playing with Justin in New York, he was always — he’s just a baseball rat. ... I always enjoyed talking baseball with him. I still enjoy talking baseball with him.”
Murphy established himself as the Mets’ second baseman, but his hitting epiphany didn’t come until his final half-season, when his historic power show in the postseason helped them win the NL pennant. He signed a three-year, $37.5 million deal with Washington in January 2016. Over a season and a half with the Nationals, he has a .978 OPS, compared with .755 in New York.
“We definitely are different players today than we were when we were teammates with the Mets,” Murphy said. “That’s probably a fair way to describe it. I think every player is still evolving, whether it’s on the offensive side, defensive side, pitching. The competition is so high, it’s so good now, that you better continue to evolve if you want to survive.”