Top 5 Tuesday: Daniel Murphy’s postseason home runs, ranked
Welcome to Top 5 Tuesday, a new feature where we’ll rank the top five somethings, every Tuesday. This week we’re lucky Daniel Murphy has hit exactly five home runs this postseason.
Game 3 of the Mets-Cubs series is Tuesday night. Will suddenly supernatural second baseman Daniel Murphy continue his blistering hot streak?
Murphy, who’s never hit more than 14 home runs in a season, has five in seven postseason games. What? How? He’s so hot that the Cubs decided to intenionally walk him in Game 2 and pitch to Yoenis Cespedes.
Conveniently for us, five is also the number of items we rank in this weekly list, so let’s put these homers in order.
• Mets coach on Daniel Murphy’s homer: AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
5. NLDS Game 4, fourth inning
This is the only homer Murphy has hit in a Mets loss this postseason. It’s impressive that it came off of Clayton Kershaw, but the Dodgers ace left a fastball right over the middle of the plate in the upper part of the zone.
4. NLDS Game 1, fourth inning
Ho hum, another dinger off of Kershaw. Looks like Kershaw is trash, actually.
3. NLCS Game 1, first inning
Yeah, another homer pulled to rightfield. Murph gets bonus points here because he started the game with a dinger in the first and made a nice defensive play for the final out of the ninth.
• Illinois, New York state senators make lame pizza bet on NLCS
2. NLCS Game 2, first inning
What’s that? Another home run to right in the first inning? This one is especially impressive because it came on a pretty nasty curveball from Jake Arrieta. That pitch would have been in the dirt if Murphy hadn’t put it over the fence.
1. NLDS Game 5, sixth inning
A game-winning homer in an elimination game? Yeah, that’s pretty cool.