Why are the Oakland A’s asking for a king’s ransom in exchange for a mediocre hitter like Sean Murphy

The Cleveland Guardians want Sean Murphy but the Oakland A’s are treating him like an All-MLB level player.

The Oakland A’s are currently the laughingstock of the Major Leagues. The team, which has always been a bit of a sad sight for fans, is not going to be competing anytime soon and they may not even be in Oakland much longer. The heydey of their success is long gone, and the names of Jose Canseco, Barry Zito, and Eric Chavez are distant memories. This is a team whose city barely wants them and refuses to build them a new stadium; even though they’re the last remaining major sports team in the area.

Yet, they have one asset that the entire major league is vying for, catcher Sean Murphy. Historically, Murphy can barely be considered a good all-around catcher. He has just one full year of 130+ games to his name and is a career .236 hitter.

Even if you look at just his away average, it’s still not enough to say that he’s some elite player. He has just one gold glove to his name, and he strikes out a lot. He’s not someone to scoff at, don’t misconstrue what is being said, he’d be a wonderful fit for the right price but he’s not a typical “good” offensive player. That’s all.

The problem is, there are so few good offensive catchers at the moment, that his value is drastically inflated. The A’s know this, and they’re trying to extort teams for a guy who is going to age out of his position very soon. See, catchers’ knees break down really fast, and usually by their early 30s, they’re calling it quits. Buster Posey retired at 34. Joe Mauer at 35. As far as reliable stars go, both men were done by 30.

Sure, Posey had a bounce-back year in his final season, but that’s more of an outlier. Most of the catchers who have made All-Star games over the last four seasons are not the same people. There was a time when you knew that a guy would play 130+ games, hit really well, and call a good game and would be in the All-Star game every year or every other year.

That’s no longer the case with catchers. Over the last four All-Star Games, there have been 17 spaces available for catchers. Of those 17 spaces, 14 different men occupied a spot at some point. Only two, J.T. Realmuto and Willson Contreras have appeared more than once.

So, either that means the league is flushed with truly talented catchers, or, that most catchers playing today aren’t as good as advertised, resulting in so much parody at the position.

Sean Murphy at any other position is a below-average hitter

That takes us back to Murphy. For a team to demand an everyday outfielder, along with a Gold Glove player who was second-runner-up in the NL Rookie of the Year race and a top pitching prospect for a .236 career hitter, who is 28 and has only played 51% of all total games over the last four years would get you banned from baseball on principal; if it was any other position apparently.

Yet, the A’s believe they have an asset for the first time in some time and are making everyone dance for it. It feels like war profiteering. And it’s turning people off.

The Cardinals needed a catcher. They said goodbye to future Hall of Famer Yadier Molina this offseason (arguably the last great all-around catcher the Majors had) and opted to over-pay for a soon-to-be 31-year-old catcher in Contreras, who rarely plays more than 115 games in a season and is a career .256 hitter. They did that because they did not want to deal with the A’s and their foolishness.

The A’s and many fans seem to think “three years of control” is worth a king’s ransom for a guy who will be lucky to hit .240 and 20 home runs for your club. That’s nothing to scoff at. I’d give up a Top 20 prospect for that kind of guy.

But if didn’t play catcher, he may not even be worth that.

That’s what people need to understand. Just because he’s a catcher doesn’t make his output-to-cost ratio somehow acceptable. There are a lot of great defensive catchers in the league. Frankly, the Guardians haven’t had a truly “bad” defensive catcher since before Sandy Alomar. Even Victor Martinez and Carlos Santana were “fine”.

They never brought the defense or the pitching staff down, that’s for sure. So for me, or anyone, to believe that Murphy is worth this gaudy price when in the last three years there have been six different Gold Glove winners at this position further proves that it’s not hard to find a sub-par hitter who can catch a game.

There are very few truly great catchers in the game at the moment, and that’s created a sense of parody and that parody is being misconstrued for elite talent. Murphy isn’t an outlier of the talent parody at the position, he’s the embodiment of it.