Even in April, the first full month of a typical Major League Baseball season, there’s room for high-impact transactions. To name one example, we’re coming up on exactly three years since Dodgers president Andrew Friedman further stacked the perennial NL West champions’ roster. On April 29, 2017, Friedman and the Dodgers announced the signing of infielder Max Muncy to a minor league contract. What looked like a nondescript signing then has turned into yet another of Friedman-led front office’s wise moves in Los Angeles.
Muncy came into the pros as a fifth-round pick of the Athletics in 2012, and he reached the majors three years later. However, from 2015-16, Muncy was anything but a valuable player for Oakland. He took 245 major league trips to the plate during that span and struggled to a .195/.290/.321 line with minus-0.7 fWAR. And Muncy wasn’t a world-beater with the Athletics’ Triple-A affiliate in Nashville, where he posted an OPS under .800 in parts of two seasons there. The A’s outrighted him in January 2017.
If you were an A’s fan whose team lost Muncy three years ago or a Dodgers loyalist whose club added him, “Who cares?” may have been a justifiable reaction. But nobody knew then that Muncy would soon establish himself as one of the biggest-hitting players in the sport.
Muncy didn’t appear in the majors during his first season with the Dodgers, but he did slash an encouraging .309/.414/.491 across 379 plate appearances with their Triple-A team in Oklahoma City. Muncy has scarcely played in the minors since then because he has simply been too good in the majors to go back.
Muncy took his first at-bat with the Dodgers on April 17, 2018, chipping in a pinch-hit single in an extra-innings victory over the Padres. He has piled up 225 more regular-season hits since then while slashing .256/.381/.545 with 70 home runs in 1,070 trips to the plate. Since Muncy joined the big club, just 14 major league position players have outdone his fWAR total (10.0), while only seven have bettered him in wRC+ (146). He’s right there with Nelson Cruz, Anthony Rendon, Juan Soto and teammate Cody Bellinger in the latter category. Hard to believe when you consider where he was a few years back. But it’s not just about the regular season for the Dodgers. They’re a playoff team every year, and Muncy hasn’t wilted on that stage. Remember this homer?
Adding to the 29-year-old Muncy’s value, he’s no slouch in the field. He accounted for a positive Defensive Runs Saved figure last year at three different positions – first, second and third. He’s one of seemingly countless Swiss Army knife-type players on the Dodgers’ roster, and among the key contributors to a team that has stayed dominant of late and should again vie for a championship whenever baseball resumes. The Dodgers are believers, having given Muncy a three-year, $26MM extension in February. Not a bad outcome for someone who first joined the organization on a non-guaranteed deal.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
The one thing I’m curious about is what did he change in his game from Oakland to LA that has turned him into an all star. Was it what they did to J.D Martinez? Was it a change in mentality or even batting stance?
I look up an article and in his words (copied and pasted directly from the article” “In a sense, my swing was still the same, but I was in a better position to start it. The swing itself, nothing had really changed in that, it’s just that I was able to get myself into a better position to fire the bat quickly, and a lot of that had to do with being mentally more aggressive. Also, I was able to figure out that I could be more aggressive, mentally, but still lay off pitches that I didn’t want to swing at, and when that kind of clicked for me last year, that’s when things really started taking off.”
In n out.
He started eating 3 in n out cheeseburgers with a side of animal style fries 3x a week in LA. You ought to give a go too. I hear it does wonders for your swing and cholesterol.
JD did it to his ownself…..
Read The MVP Machine. Amazing book. Talks about Driveline up in Seattle and the Ballyard in SoCal. Muncy and Martinez both spent time at the Ballyard.
Rob Van Scoyoc came into his life in LA. He’s impacted so many Dodgers’ swings in the last 3-4 years that LA hired him last year as the hitting coach. Turner, Muncy, Bellinger, Taylor, Kike, Lux, Smith etc all have very similar basic mechanics… implemented by RVS
Muncy has been a godsend to LA, but really RVS is the MVP of the current Dodger Above average hitter overload they have
Read “The MVP Machine” It talks about it and is an incredible story that Im certain you’ll dig.
So the Dodgers went and got it out of the Oakland?
There was just an article over at LWOB that put him on the Dodgers All-Decade team…. I don’t know if hes THAT good… he did bat, what, .263?
lastwordonbaseball.com/2020/04/27/dodgers-all-deca…
If they’re basing it off of one year, I would absolutley take 2018 Max Muncy. So what if he batted .263? He had an OBP of nearly .400 and had a .582 slugging %. His 161 OPS+ was 31% better than Adrian Gonzalez’s best season in LA, and 22% better than Cody Bellinger’s 2017 rookie season.
I bet when they signed him, they were only thinking about their AAA team. I love when things work out.
I can only imagine what could have been if the Yankees took the flier on Muncy instead of the Dodgers. With his swing in Yankee Stadium, he’d be putting up 50 homers a year.