ESPN news: What Murphy’s injury has caused the braves……

Atlanta lost one of the top catchers in the league on Opening Day, but Travis d’Arnaud and Chadwick Tromp have done a fantastic job filling in.

The Atlanta Braves’ 2024 regular season got off to an unfavorable start on Opening Day when starting catcher and 2023 All-Star Sean Murphy was sidelined by an oblique injury. Murphy has not yet returned to the big-league club, and the team has not stated when they anticipate having him back. The team is approaching the end of May.

Losing a top-tier starting catcher would hinder many clubs’ efforts to produce league-average results at a position where players are frequently valued more for their defensive and non-combative skills than for their ability to be effective at bat.

Luckily for Atlanta, 2022 All-Star Travis d’Arnaud was ready to take over for the 35-year-old, who had given up his starting job to Murphy. The respected d’Arnaud is not only managing a pitching staff that has performed better than expected this season, but his offensive output has also increased to a level reminiscent of his seasons in 2022 and 2020.

Chadwick Tromp moved up one spot on the depth chart. Tromp is in his third season with the Braves organization and has seen more MLB playing time than he has since 2020, when he was a rookie with the San Francisco Giants. Tromp has only contributed a meager amount of offensive production in his 14 games with the Braves this season, but he has excelled defensively; this combination will probably be sufficient to keep him on Atlanta’s roster until Murphy returns.

Following their victory over the Chicago Cubs on May 14, 2024, the Braves were two games behind the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East with a 26-13 record. The 2024 squad has found success pitching a defense while the team’s attack has declined from a record-setting 2023 campaign. Meanwhile, the organization and its supporters continue to anticipate that the offensive will improve to a level more akin to the previous campaign.

In light of this, let’s examine d’Arnaud and Tromp’s at-bat performances without Murphy, one of the top 10 all-around catchers in the game. It is noteworthy that William Contreras, the player Murphy was supposedly traded for, has emerged as one of the best catchers in the game. The former Brave is currently producing an incredible 171 wRC+ and 2.3 fWAR for the Milwaukee Brewers, along with a defensive output that is, at worst, neutral and not as strong as his 2023 leap forward.

Travis Arnaud

With 1.1 fWAR so far in the 2024 campaign, the seasoned d’Arnaud has been productive offensively. This has been supported by a 136 wRC+ in 34 games through May 14. Examining his Baseball Savant page reveals a number of positive aspects. He has excelled in multiple offensive categories, such as Barrel %, Hard-Hit %, XBA, xwOBA, and xSLG, and has consistently performed far above average-to-great. While framing and pop-time are both below average, he is still blocking at very elite levels.

If you have followed d’Arnaud throughout his tenure in Atlanta, you have probably observed that he now almost exclusively throws from his knees in an effort to catch base stealers. There has been a sense that his improved throwing approach has greatly increased his ability to suppress the running game, aided by the elimination of four runners who attempted to steal.

That hasn’t precisely been the situation.

Despite being one CS Above Average, d’Arnaud’s Pop Time, or the amount of time it takes a throw to get to the base, is 1.97, which is the same as it was the previous year. His Pop Time has varied from 2.06 to 1.94, with the exception of his 2018 season with the New York Mets, during which he had just six chances to throw out a runner at second base. Throughout his five-year tenure with Atlanta, the range shrank to 2.03–1.94.

D’Arnaud’s arm strength has slightly declined this season; his 78.7 MPH is the lowest of his career and the book end of a range that peaked at 79.5 in 2022 during his five Braves seasons.

He has made a significant improvement in his exchange time. The time it takes to catch the ball that has been thrown and move it to the throwing hand so that it can be released is called exchange time. D’Arnaud’s exchange time this season is 0.64 seconds for 34 games. That represents a significant time reduction from 2021 and 2022, when he sat at 0.82 and 0.76, respectively, but just a minor increase over 2023’s 0.67 score.

Although d’Arnaud’s Exchange Time improvement only moves him up to the 29th spot in baseball, it has benefitted him in general because his Pop Time and Arm Strength are both ranked many spots below. His Exchange Time in 2021, by contrast, was the fourth worst in the game of baseball, ranking 47th. Additionally, he has been fortunate because qualified catchers have the second-slowest average of 27.9 feet/second recorded by would-be base stealers on each attempt.

This is not to say that his improvement to be just below average is a bad thing; on the contrary, it is an illustration of a player who has made a tiny adjustment to his game in an effort to get better.

Although defensive measurement can occasionally be deceptive or at best inconsistent, they haven’t liked d’Arnaud’s framing this season; in this area, he was above average to excellent in the previous few seasons but has fallen to below average this one.

Chadwick Tromp

Tromp has only appeared in 14 games in 2024, therefore the sample size is small. He has a 0.0 fWAR, but his defense is rated well enough by the analytics to make up for his lackluster offensive production, which is only 33 wRC+. With just 38 plate appearances, he isn’t far from increasing his offensive totals with one strong outing, such as his lone 2022 game where he went 3 for 4 with three RBI. Though he has demonstrated above-average bat speed, there isn’t much cause for hope with the rest of his offensive profile.

That being said, Tromp’s play has been above average defensively, so it’s acceptable that he will continue to fill the job of typical backup catcher while Murphy is out. His framing skill and CS Above Average are both above average, despite the fact that his Blocks Above Average have been below average.

Even though he had only seen 330 pitches as of May 14th, he is tied with a few other backstops for eighth place in catcher framing runs. Positively, he has seen at least 260 less pitches than the seven players placed higher than him. He leads all of baseball in the framing of pitches on the outer border of the first-base side of the plate because of his exceptional skill at doing so.

Tromp has only made five attempts at second base, yet he is tied with d’Arnaud with one Catcher’s CS Above Average. Tromp is ranked 10th in both leagues with a Pop Time of 1.90. Tromp’s Exchange Time ranks fourth in the game at 0.58 seconds, just 0.02 seconds behind Yan Gomes’s record for the greatest in the sport. It has been among the top in the league.

Tromp ranks 13th for the slowest speed at which runners attempt to steal, making their attempts against him slower than normal but not as slow as against d’Arnaud.

In comparison to Murphy in 2023, how do d’Arnaud and Tromp perform in 2024?

Murphy was among the league’s top catchers in 2023 for a reason. In practically every batting category, he was above average to great, and in terms of catcher defense metrics, he was among the best. Last year, he was incredibly talented, earning a perfect 100 in Block Above Average. Murphy finished below d’Arnaud in the bottom 20 percent of the baseball last year, but he was fourth in Arm Strength and Pop Time.

Murphy was nearly unreplaceable in terms of overall output (4.9 fWAR) last season despite his troubles in the second half. Nonetheless, d’Arnaud and Tromp have performed admirably, with d’Arnaud handling the majority of the labor-intensive work and practically all of it offensively.

It would have been unlikely to have anticipated any better performance than that of d’Arnaud and Tromp forty games into the season, assuming Murphy returns before mid-season.