Diamondbacks Reported to be Interested in Sean Murphy

What might it take to land the slugging, Gold Glove catcher?

As reported by Nick Piecoro of AZ Central, the Diamondbacks are interested in trading for Oakland A's catcher Sean Murphy. This tracks with the position we here have taken at Inside the Diamondbacks: If the team is going to trade one of their young outfielders, they should do so for upgrade at catcher. 

I wrote about this in depth on November 18th, As mentioned in that article, earlier in the off season Hazen indicated that they were just looking for defensive backup depth. In that article we made the case for why not only was the depth at the position lacking, but that they need an upgrade at starter as well. 

Murphy was identified as one of the trade targets. But he has a steep trade value. Much of how much one might value Murphy depends on how you treat catcher framing. Baseball Reference does not include catcher framing in their catcher WAR metric. They do not feel it is a reliable enough metric. Accordingly, they have a 3.5 WAR value for Murphy in 2022.

Fangraphs on the other hand has Murphy valued at 5.1 WAR. More than half that 1.6 WAR difference is due to the 8.7 framing runs that Murphy is credited with under their metric. Statcast, for what it's worth, also values Murphy's framing at 8 runs. 

In this case we'll just use the average of the two WAR, or aWAR for our starting point in evaluation. That also happens to be what Murphy is projected to produce at Fangraphs this year.  Here then is what his trade value may look like in dollar terms.

Sean Murphy / Jack Sommers

Using a similar method as you see above, we previously estimated Diamondbacks outfielder trade values as follows:

• Daulton Varsho: $77.2M 
• Alek Thomas: $47.5M
• Jake McCarthy: $46.7M
• Dominic Fletcher: $15.6M 

NOTE: The D-backs have made clear that Corbin Carroll is not available, and as of right now Pavin Smith probably does not have positive trade value, despite the team's confidence in his bat going forward. 

Varsho is not a fit, simply because the the A's are looking to save payroll, and Varsho is a "Super 2" projected to make $2.8M in 2023, just $700K less than Murphy. Varsho's arb costs would then escalate for the next three seasons beyond this one. That would seem counter to what the A's are trying to do. 

Thomas and McCarthy are valued approximately the same by this method, but most people believe that Thomas holds more trade value than McCarthy at this time, despite having been demoted at the end of last season. His upside is viewed as being higher, and some of McCarthy's underlying peripherals may not support the results he got in 2022. 

However Thomas' value one for one clearly does not lineup with Murphy's.  On paper it looks like a at least a $15 million dollar gap, and in reality could be more. 

So the question becomes what else would the A's want to balance the trade ? If they want pitching, they are surely going to ask for one of the better pitching prospects the D-backs have. But Arizona would almost certainly balk intially at moving Brandon Pfaadt, Drey Jameson, and or even Blake Walston. Moving down the Top 30 prospects list, might the A's consider one of Slade Cecconi or Ryne Nelson to be  a good enough prospect to pair with Thomas in such a deal? 

That seems possible. So the test will be whether the D-backs are willing to part with any of the three aforementioned higher ranked pitching prospects, or if the A's will settle for one of Cecconi or Nelson.