by The Braves, Brewers and A’s have agreed to a three-team blockbuster that will see each team get a new catcher with nine players involved total. The complete trade is as follows:
The brave get Sean Murphygive up Kyle Muller, Royber Salinas, Justin Yeager, Freddy Tarnock, Manny Pina And William Contraras.
The brewers take William Contreras, Joel PayampsJustin Yeager, surrender Esteury Ruiz.
A takes Kyle Muller, Esteury Ruiz, Freddy Tarnok, Royber Salinas and Manny Pina, giving up Sean Murphy and Joel Payamps.
This move finally ends a commercial saga that has been going on for about a year. After the 2021 season, the A’s engaged hard in a rebuild that saw them trade Matthew Olson, Matthew Chapman, Sean Manea And Chris Bassitt before opening day, with Frankie Montas be reversed at the 2022 deadline.
Murphy was widely seen as the next to go for a variety of reasons. First, he just went through three years of MLB service in 2022 and will now earn higher salaries through arbitration. MLBTR aide Matt Swartz projected Murphy to rise to $3.5 million in 2023 with two more raises before hitting free agency after 2025. Second, the A’s received an excellent catching prospect from Atlanta in the ‘Olson affair in Shea Langeliers. He had a strong season in Triple-A and performed well in a 40-game debut in the majors. Given all these factors, it seemed increasingly likely that the A’s would give the job to Langeliers and trade Murphy for improvements elsewhere on the roster.
Taking this route, the A’s part ways with one of the best receivers in the game. The 28-year-old Murphy has 330 major league games to his credit so far and has performed well in nearly every aspect of the game. He has hit 46 home runs and has a combined batting line of .236 / .326 / .429. That production leads to a wRC+ of 116, indicating that he was 16% above the average hitter in the league and even ahead of the average catcher, since they generally land a little lower than the rest. He also stepped up to the plate in 2022, making just 20.3% of his plate appearances after being over 25% in his career before him.
Defensively, Murphy also gets rave reviews. Since the start of 2020, he has recorded 13 defensive runs saved behind the plate, a number that ranks him in the top 10 in the league. FanGraphs’ framing metric gives it a 19.5 in that time frame, the third-highest such count. Those all-around contributions allowed him to produce 10 wins over replacement in those three seasons, according to FanGraphs, second among all MLB wide receivers with only JT Realmuto before him.
Taking all of this into consideration, it’s no surprise that Murphy has garnered a lot of interest around the league. The Diamondbacks, Astros, Cubs, Guardians, Twins, White Sox, Red Sox, Rays and Cardinals have been some of the teams linked to him at various times over the past few months. It was reported about a week ago that the Braves were closing in on acquiring him, but president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos dismissed those reports, saying he didn’t anticipate a trade. It was either a bluff or something drastically changed in the last week since Atlanta actually closed the deal.
Atlanta always seemed like a curious choice for Murphy as they already had three strong receivers on the roster in Contreras, Pina and Travis d’Arnaud. They broke that bottleneck and acquired Murphy in one fell swoop by including two of those hunters in the deal. On the surface, it appears the club wanted to replace Contreras with Murphy to improve behind the base. However, since the A’s look set to give Langeliers a chance, it’s possible they were less interested in Contreras, which necessitated Milwaukee’s involvement.
That’s not to say Contreras isn’t an exciting young receiver in his own right. It’s just that, as mentioned, Murphy is one of the best in the game. Contreras will now join his older brother Willson Contreras, who recently signed with the Cardinals, at BN Central. The young Contreras has gone in 153 games in his career thus far, hitting 28 home runs and producing an overall batting line of .260/.338/.471 for a wRC+ of 121. His defensive work isn’t as highly regarded as his bat, but he’s still quite young, he’ll be 25 later this month. Even with poor defense, he’s produced 2.5 fWAR in his short career thus far, meaning any development in that department would make him extremely valuable. It was recently reported that the club was interested in getting upgrades, but as the club has reduced a tight payroll, they have never looked like candidates for a big free agent splash. Instead, they acquired a young backstop who has yet to reach arbitration eligibility and still has five years of control of the club left.
For the A’s, it’s reported that they’ve been prioritizing MLB-ready talent in their trade talks and they’ve caught up with it here. Muller, 25, has appeared in each of the last two major league seasons, logging 49 innings thus far. He has an unimpressive 5.14 ERA in that span, but fared much better in the minors. He has made 40 Triple-A starts over the past two years and has a 3.40 ERA, 28.4% strikeout rate and 9.2% walk rate. Baseball America recently ranked him the top prospect in the Atlanta system.
And there’s more.
Jomboy Media’s Talkin’ Jake first reported that the Braves, Brewers and A’s were gearing up for a deal, as was Contreras’ involvement (Chirping links). ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported first Murphy go to the Braves, as well as the involvement of Pina and the eventual final deal. FanSided’s Robert Murray first mentioned Ruiz and Tarnok (Chirping links). Joel Sherman first mentioned Payamps and Yeager Chirping. Kiley McDaniel first spelled Muller’s name Chirping.
