Boston Red Sox prospects: Analyzing the Rule 5 Draft protections
By Hunter Noll
Boston Red Sox pitching prospect – Chris Murphy
Chris Murphy (number nine on my prospect list) is one of my guys. And in 2022 he took another big step forward. The left-handed pitcher made his way to Triple-A halfway through the year after putting in work in Double-A.
I even got to watch Murph pitch twice when he was with Portland, and the stuff is nasty. Absolutely love his changeup, and he’s got some underrated breaking balls.
His numbers took a hit when he went to Triple-A, but I feel the need to point something out whenever this is brought up: Murphy struggled after getting promoted to Double-A in 2021. In 2022, he was dog-walking opposing teams at that level. He was making everyone that stepped up to the plate look silly.
Even with the struggles at Triple-A, Murph managed to finish the 2022 season with a solid 4.03 ERA, .220 BAA, and 1.28 WHIP. In 152 innings, he racked up 149 strikeouts. And he impressively cut down his home runs allowed to 14. The previous year he allowed 21 homers in just 101.1 innings. That’s what we call growth.
It seems obvious that Murphy needs to get acclimated for a little bit, but once he does, he’s going to give you some fantastic innings.
And even in Triple-A, we saw a lot of “he was out there one inning too long” outings. Five-or-six great innings, then he’d come out of the next and run out of gas. That’s something I think we’ll see improvement with in 2023.
This was another insanely obvious choice. A left-handed pitcher that made marked improvements and worked his way up to Triple-A in 2022. He’ll get a shot in the Majors in 2023 and could be an interesting piece for either the rotation or the bullpen.