Mariners Spring Training: The 5 coldest bats

Mariners Hitter #3: Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy is also making a highly anticipated return to T-Mobile Park this season, after missing the entire 2020 season. The 29-year-old catcher hasn’t found his offensive groove yet in Arizona and is struggling.

Through 16 at-bats, Murphy has a .188 batting average, .235 OBP, .313 slugging percentage, and .548 OPS. Not very Tom Murphy-esque. Murphy has only walked once and struck out four times.

His stats aren’t appealing at all, but we can cut Tom some slack. He hasn’t seen game pitching in a long time. Matter as a of fact, the last time he was in a batter’s box was Summer Camp, against his own teammates.

It is still early in Spring Training, so we are hoping Murphy is just shaking the rust off. If he can get back to his 2019 ways, that would be a huge boost for the Mariners this season. Last year, it seemed like a revolving door of catchers so having a steady guy would be nice.

Austin Nola was holding it down for a while but the Padres called for his services. While Luis Torrens was working his way into the mix, a few other catchers manned the backstop. But it is clear, Murphy had the best bat out of the Mariners catching group last year and it was badly missed.

This year might be different though. Luis Torrens is hungry to split time with Murphy, and Cal Raleigh is impressing in Arizona right now.

Another question to ponder over, how long will Tom Murphy be the Mariners catcher? It might depend on how he performs this month and during the first half of the regular season.