Mets postseason hero Daniel Murphy announced his retirement last month, and the three-time All-Star joined Moose & Maggie on Tuesday to look back on one of the most memorable runs of his 12-year career.
Murphy caught fire in the 2015 postseason, slugging the Mets to a World Series appearance thanks to seven playoff homers, including going deep in a record six straight games, and unsurprisingly, Murphy looks back to that magical October now that he’s able to reflect on a finished career.
“I have gotten an opportunity to reflect on my career, and I ended up seeing the faces of my teammates and the relationships I built,” Murphy said. “When we were able to clinch the pennant in Chicago, I was able to give David [Wright] the biggest hug. I don’t know if he wanted it or not, but I’ve seen it multiple times on video and he got it nonetheless. But it’s times like that. Lucas Duda, when I see him, I think I made a diving play in the NLDS at the end of the game that everyone got a piece of, I was just the last one to touch the ball and give it to Lucas at first, it’s things like that. I end up seeing the faces of those great relationships that I have after 15 years of baseball.”
Murphy was the driving force behind the Mets’ surge to their first Fall Classic appearance in 15 years, posting a ridiculous 1.115 OPS in the 2015 postseason thanks to a suddenly dynamic power stroke that produced dramatic home runs like his go-ahead dinger in the sixth inning of game five of the NLDS against the Dodgers. Murphy, in the midst of one of the most historic playoff performances in baseball history, was as surprised as everyone watching his sudden offensive explosion.
“I think my career high in home runs was 13 or 14 or somewhere in there,” Murphy said. “Seven in a month, to say that was unexpected would be falling well shy. I was certainly thrilled, but it was unexpected to say the least.”
The Mets themselves were in an unexpected spot, suddenly clicking after finishing the first half of the season with a 47-42 record. But Murphy hit eight of his 14 home runs in the final two months of the season, while the rest of the team came alive after acquiring Yoenis Cespedes in a trade with the Tigers.
“The success we had, that was unexpected,” Murphy said. “I probably didn’t culminate until the second half of 2015. So I was able to get some positive reinforcement starting right there at the beginning of August. Cespedes came over and decided he wasn’t going to get out for eight weeks, Flores was swinging the bat well and we got David back.”
Murphy credits his late-season surge and his October heroics to working with hitting coach Kevin Long prior to the 2015 season, when Murphy was coming off an All-Star season and found a way to be even more valuable to the Mets after working with Long, the Yankees former hitting coach.
“He reached out to me before the season started and said ‘I’ve been pouring over your swing and here’s what I’m thinking.’” Murphy said. “It was his investment in me before we even spoke, and at the same time he’s really smart and he was speaking my language, so when I got to camp, I just hitched my wagon to Kevin, and wherever he went, I went. So I had no apprehension at all.”
Murphy’s work with Long, and his otherworldly production in the playoffs, made him a coveted free agent the following offseason, and after rejecting the Mets’ qualifying offer of $15.8 million, signed with the division rival Nationals for three years and $37.5 million. Murphy continued his rise to stardom in Washington, finishing second in the MVP voting in 2016, but never felt any animosity towards his former team when they didn’t extend him a higher offer.
“The Mets made me an offer, I just didn’t accept it,” Murphy said. “As that offseason, the winter of 2015/2016 commenced, our market developed and Sandy [Alderson] and the Mets’ market developed and they moved quickly to get Neil Walker, who by the way had a really good year in 2016, and Asdrubal Cabrera. And I can’t be too mad about landing in Washington, because that was a good club. It really put the Nats and Mets on a collision course in the NL East, which was a lot of fun. So I don’t hold any resentment whatsoever with that.”
Murphy sure seemed to take it personally on the field, sticking it to the Mets every time the Nationals faced his former team in the form of a .413 batting average that included a hit in all 19 games against New York in 2016.
“When we would go back to New York and Queens, even though I would walk into the visiting locker room, which was very strange, I would come back and my wife would just speak of how all the workers there that we had gotten to know treated her so graciously…even though I was wearing a different uniform, it still had this home feel to it,” Murphy said. “It was also a division rival, so I wasn’t upset to play well against the Mets either. So maybe it was all of those things.”
Murphy was a New York nightmare after he left the Mets, but will always be remembered fondly for his historic postseason in 2015. He looks back on that playoff run with a similar fondness.
“The experience in 2015 was so awesome,” Murphy said. “There were guys that reached out to me and women that reached out to Tori when we announced our retirement that rekindled some relationships that you almost forget how sweet that time was.”
Listen to Murphy’s full interview with Moose & Maggie below!
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