"I Want to Dominate"
A conversation with Ryan Murphy
Last week while I was visiting Eugene, I had a chance to sit down with RHP Ryan Murphy. The Giants 5th round pick in 2020, Ryan was something of an after-thought at the time, with most people (myself included!) often dismissing him as a “signability pick” whose primary importance was allowing the Giants to move around bonus slot money to accommodate Kyle Harrison’s signing demands.
But in 2021, Murphy has shown that he’s a whole lot more than just his bonus number. He’s having one of the major breakouts in the system, especially on the pitching side. After a monster July that saw him win Pitcher of the Month in the Low-A West, Ryan was moved up to High-A Eugene, where he’s just kept on shoving. For most of the last month, Murphy has been on top, or near the top (depending on the day) of the strikeout leaderboard across the minor leagues. As of today, he has 132 K on the season, just one behind the Nationals’ Cade Cavalli for the minor league lead.
I had hoped to record our conversation for a podcast, but the situation in the stadium during our conversation wasn’t so conducive to an audio recording (with BP music blaring over the stadium speakers, cafe workers dropping dishes near us, the usual chaotic preparations for a night of baseball. But Ryan was so thoughtful and engaging, that I really wanted you to get a feel for his voice and his personality. So, rather than writing an article with just a few pull-quotes from our interview (in which you’d mostly hear my voice), I decided to transcribe the full thing — the better for you to get a real sense of this bright, intelligent young athlete who has consistently had confidence in his ability even while others (myself included!) may have doubted him.
ThereRGiants: I’ll open up by being totally honest with you and saying that when the Giants selected you in the draft, I had never ever heard of Le Moyne College before.
Ryan Murphy: Yeah, I’ve gotten that a few of times.
TRG: …although apparently Josiah Gray went there and you were teammates for awhile.
RM: Yeah I played with him my freshman year. He was the #1 when I got there. I ended up being #2 by the end of the year, so it was Josiah and then me.
TRG: So I guess the first thing I’d like to ask you is, take me through your baseball journey. Obviously the kids who are on the showcase circuit, they try and find warm weather schools to play at. So how did you end up in Syracuse?
RM: So when I was in high school, I was actually the JV shortstop. I wasn’t really a great hitter but I could field pretty well. Sophomore year I got called up to varsity midseason and played one game, did well. Second game: made two errors and never saw the field again. So I thought, alright, I want to find a way onto the field anyway I can, so I asked the coach: can I throw a bullpen? And he said “yeah, absolutely, I actually planned on having you throw live anyway to the guys.” So I went to the back cages and started carving up the senior guys and they were like: “oh wow, this kid’s not bad.” And that’s how my pitching career started.
And then my junior year, I started the second game and by my senior year I was the ace. By that time, I was going to showcases around New York. I wasn’t really into the Perfect Game tournaments. I didn’t play for a prestigious travel team or anything like that. I just played for a local high school travel team because I just wanted to play.
I only had one D1 offer, and it wasn’t much of a scholarship offer — it was just a roster spot. That was U-Albany. And then Le Moyne was really high on me, they offered me a lot of money out of the gate and I thought: “ok, wow these guys really like me.” So it came down to Le Moyne and U-Albany. The head coach at Le Moyne, Scott Cassidy, played in the big leagues and had good connections with scouts. He told me: “if you’re good enough, they’ll find you, but you just need to play.” He offered me a guaranteed spot to pitch — which they all do, but I really thought his offer was genuine and I felt like I really wanted to go there. So I went there and things unfolded the way they did.
TRG: So growing up in cold weather — and I went to college in the northeast, so I know Syracuse is really cold weather — how do you get your work in?
RM: You just have to grind it out. There’s times I’ve thrown outside in the snow. It’s part of the grind that it was. Le Moyne had a nice hookup with an indoor place that was also a soccer field. So, we got our work in there in the preseason. And we’d go down to the Carolinas for beginning of the season and then come back up and go right back into the cold. You’re playing in like 28 to 35° weather to start the season. But you just have to grind it out. It is what it is. You’re not really blessed with warm weather in Syracuse, NY. We’d do what we had to do and not complain about too much, even though we could.
TRG: Were you a hockey guy too?
RM: No I actually wasn’t. I was baseball and basketball. My dad didn’t want me to play football and hockey wasn’t really big where I was because I was more downstate New York. It was really big in upstate, New York, like the Syracuse area. I know a lot of the guys I played with up there were big hockey guys. It wasn’t my thing though.
TRG: So you get to your junior year and everything goes haywire and then you hear the draft is only five rounds. What were you thinking then? Did you think you’d get drafted?
RM: So, when all that happened, when COVID happened, I was hoping [the draft] would maybe be ten rounds, and I could sneak into the ten rounds. When I heard it was going to be five rounds, I thought: “ok that changes a lot of things.” Then I heard about the free agent signing period ]that would come] after the draft. Honestly, I was prepared for anything, but at the same time I was being a realist and thinking: I’m a D2 guy from New York. And yeah, we had Josiah Gray and that put us on the map when he was drafted in 2018 in the 2nd round. But we didn’t have a lot of exposure up there. So I was thinking: if I get a free agent contract, I’m just going to take it, because I want to play and I knew I could play at this level. So going through that whole thing was kind of stressful, especially when I heard it would be five rounds after the rumors of maybe ten or twenty. That definitely was interesting.
TRG: After your college season shut down, between then and the draft, were you able to showcase for anybody or throw bullpens for anybody?
RM: No. My coach told me when the season ended to keep my arm ready “because you never know, teams might have pre-draft workouts and if they do I’m sure you’ll get called to go work out for them.” But I never did and personally, I didn’t know a lot of guys who did. I’m sure there were some, but I didn’t get asked to do any of those pre-draft workouts.
TRG: So when did you know that the Giants were interested in you.
RM: I had a scout day at Le Moyne and I saw that the area scout for the Giants was there. But I didn’t hear from him until closer to the draft and I didn’t really think they were that interested. I had some other teams that were sort of interested, like the Tigers and the Cardinals. But I did not expect the Giants to be interested enough in me to take me in the 5th round, at all. Draft Day came and I was watching the draft with my family and I got a call from my agent and he said “the Giants are willing to offer you this much in the 5th round. Would you take it?” I said “absolutely, of course.” So, I was watching my TV, had no idea what was going on, and I got a text from my agent that just said “Yo.” And I asked “what’s up?” but he didn’t answer me back. So me and my family are watching the draft and the Giants pick comes up and it goes to commercial. And it took just way longer [on commercials] than it should to make the pick. But when it came back from commercial, Matt Vasgersian came up to the podium and said my name. My family jumped up and went crazy and obviously I was just in shock. I found out from the TV. I didn’t get a call until way later in the night about it from the Giants. That was a real whirlwind.
TRG: Who was the first person from the Giants who contacted you?
RM: Ray Callari. He was the East Coast area scout and he called to congratulate me. He didn’t call until way later because he knew my phone was blowing up. All my friends and family and coaches from the past were calling me.
TRG: It seems like from the scouting reports on you in college to when you showed up in the pros you had a decent little velo bump. Is that true?
RM: Yeah, those scouting reports… I….uh….I didn’t really agree with them. My senior year, I was 91-93. I’ve had maybe a little bit of a velo jump here, but at the same time I didn’t really focus on the scouting reports. I knew how I pitched and I knew what I could do.
TRG: So you think you were more or less the same guy coming out of school as you are now?
RM: Yeah
TRG: I want to talk about your pitch mix a little bit. You throw two distinct breaking balls. A lot of guys, when they get to pro ball, will shelve one of their pitches so that they can focus on just one good breaking ball. What’s the key to being able to maintain two separate pitches with distinctive shape and break?
RM: So actually, when I was at Instructs, they weren’t two distinct pitches, they blended together pretty similarly. So one of my pitching science coordinators told me: “the curveball and slider, they’re pretty similar in velo and shape, so I think you should just focus on the slider because that’s really your pitch.” And I thought: fair enough. But that off-season I thought: I don’t want to pigeonhole myself with just one breaking ball. I want to have a four-pitch mix that I can throw all for strikes. So I worked in the off-season. I got a knuckle-curve grip and I just focused on making sure that they were two distinct pitches. Basically, the key for that is the mentality I have when I throw it, the conviction I have. When I’m throwing my slider I’m not thinking about pulling it down and I’m just thinking about getting my wrist in the right spot and throwing it hard. With my curve ball, I try to get on top of it and grip it down through the zone and really pull it down. So that’s my idea behind it. Obviously there’s a lot more that goes into it than just that and execution on the mound is a lot harder than just throwing it in a bullpen. But I try to stay on top of all of my pitches and it’s just very last second where I, basically, just wriggle my wrist around a little.
TRG: When you’re in a game, how do you mix them in. The other night [when I saw Murphy pitch), you were heavy on the fastball and slider and then, as you got into the 3rd or 4th inning, it felt like you started throwing a lot more curves [RM: Yeah]. How does that flow for you in a game?
RM: When I’m in a game…it all depends on what the hitters are giving me. I tend to like to throw my curve ball more to lefties than the slider because lefties can keep their bat in the zone longer and if [the pitch is] too horizontal they can still get their barrel to it, whether they’re late or not. But the curveball, it’s got that 12-6 drop to it, so I kind of throw it in there as a strike-stealer mainly. And then I’ll go for the out pitches like the slider down. But the main thing is that I like to mix the high fastball with the curveball. So once I’ve established the high fastball, I’m able to drop in the curveball later in the game because they might think it’s a fastball out of the hand and then it just drops into the zone. And then the out pitch is my slider because it tends to look like my fastball for a longer period of time and then it has a dive at the last second. When I’m throwing those pitches, I tend to like to set up my slider with the curveball.
TRG: One of the impressive things you do is go north-south with your fastball. Do you like to elevate mostly later in counts to get strikeouts?
RM: Yeah, I know my fastball plays up in the zone better. I can obviously get it low in the corners when I need to, but I know that I get a lot of swing and misses when I have it up in the zone.
TRG: How is your changeup coming along?
RM: Changeup is coming along decently well. It’s an interesting pitch because it’s such a “feel” pitch. Somedays you feel like it’s great and other days it feels like it’s just not there. So it really is just a confidence thing and staying in line and trying to keep the same arm action as all of your other pitches, because it’s very easy to drop your shoulder and elbow and slow everything down. The main thing for me on that is that it’s really a pitch I just throw to lefties to try to get off-balance swings and weak contact. But I would say it’s coming along. I’m getting more confident in it as the season goes on.
TRG: Something like that that relies on ‘feel,’ can you get that confidence in a bullpen or do you just have to force yourself to throw it in games?
RM: It’s definitely different throwing it in a bullpen versus during a game. When you’re throwing it in a bullpen and you see the movement and think: ok, it’s good! But once a hitter gets in, everything changes. Your velo’s going up with a hitter in the box, your adrenaline’s up a little more. You tend to overthrow things and you try to be too perfect. So you have to try to find that balance of making sure you’re not trying to do too much with the change, because you don’t want to over throw it and have it be too flat. So when I’m in the game, the real thing I’m trying to do is just keep it down and make sure it’s not just a BP fastball.
TRG: How much do you rely on reading hitters’ swings?
RM: Oh yeah, a hitter can tell you so much about an at bat and what you should and shouldn’t throw. I learned a lot about that during my time in San Jose. The pitching coach there, Paul Oseguera, he was really good at helping me analyze the way hitters take pitches, the way they swing at them, what pitches you shouldn’t throw, things like that. The hitter will tell me a lot. If I’m blowing him away with fastballs, I’m not going to make an adjustment until he makes an adjustment. And if he can’t hit a breaking ball, I’m just going to keep throwing breaking balls until he proves he can hit them.
TRG: When you were in San Jose, you started out strong and then there were some games in June that were more of a struggle. Then obviously July was just a monster month. How do you assess games after the fact and pick them apart for what’s usable. And what are the adjustments that you made to go from the June version of you to the July version of you?
RM: June was a struggle month for sure. It made me question a lot of things. To go back to what I said about the slider and the breaking ball, when I tried to make them two distinct pitches, I changed the grip on my slider. Once I did that, the slider was harder but it got way more cutter-ish. On days where it wasn’t great, it was just “cement mixing” and it just didn’t have any depth. I was getting hit around a lot. I didn’t have any feel or command for it like I did on my old slider — which is what I throw now. So I made the adjustment by switching back to my old slider and getting more depth on it, even though it was slower, it’s still 82-84. But it’s more of a pitch that I know I can throw anywhere I need to and throw confidently. And then, I made another adjustment with my arm action just to help me stay on top and stay down through the zone. I felt like I had some command issues in June, so I wanted to make sure my arm was going to end up “on time” and then my body got in sync really well. I feel like all my pitches really benefited from that. And being able to control both sides of the plate, up-down, north-south, east-west, it really helped me to control the game. And add to that learning how read swings and takes and things like that, also contributed to things turning around.
TRG: When you move up a level, how consistent are the communication and instruction that you’re getting from one coaching staff to another? I assume they’ve talked with Oseguera and Lenn Sakata. Is it easy to make the transition here?
RM: Yeah, I think the goal is all the same as far as what they preach and what they try to teach us, which is: control the zone and just own the strike zone, making sure you’re getting ahead with first pitch strikes. In San Jose we had a little game within the game. With pitchers it was things like: try to have less than 20 pitch innings, no two-out walks, stuff like that would count against you. 1-2-3 innings were plus points, just little things like that would help emphasize being better pitchers. Whatever happens after [we] release [the ball] is out of our hands, but if we can hold ourselves accountable and do everything in our power to give our team the best chance to win, that’s the goal. And that’s the same here [in Eugene.]
TRG: So who was winning the game within the game? That was quite a staff!
RM: Yeah, it was quite a staff. It would change every week. Our teams were a mixture of hitters and pitchers. So it was me, Luciano, Schmitty and then Jimmy, Harrison, Ragsdale. So the teams were mixed like that. There would be a different winner every week. I know my team came in second one of the weeks. Not where I wanted to be, but I’ll take that. I got moved up before the last one ended.
TRG: So, this is your first pro season. You’re probably beyond whatever your high innings count is in your life. How are you feeling at this point, with six weeks left to go?
RM: I’m feeling good. Obviously, there’s going to be little hiccups along the way in a long season like this, especially my first pro season. But for the most part I’m actually feeling pretty good. If anything, my velo’s actually gone up a little bit and is more consistent. I’m just making sure the training in between the starts stays the same and the routine’s all the same. Just making sure my body stays in the best shape possible.
TRG: What is your arm care process like? What do you feel like the next day and what do you need to do to get ready for the next start?
RM: One thing I definitely do is listen to my arm. If my arm is barking, if it’s saying “let’s take it easy,” I take it easy, I’m not trying to do too much. I’m not going to overwork it because it’s my money-maker right now. So, I can’t really argue with it if it’s hurting, I’m going to say “ok.” But it hasn’t been doing that too much. I’ve been keeping up with a nice little routine with weighted balls and J-bands, working out in the gym. I trust the trainers here and the strength coach, they’ve really helped me out a lot if I’m ever hurting. So they keep me right and I have a lot of little things I do between starts to help make sure I’m not falling behind.
TRG: When you get back to Day 5 you’re pretty consistently feeling ready to go?
RM: Yeah. Pretty much the same. I have my routine with the weighted balls in between starts. The day after a start, I usually do some cupping, stem care, air pressure, there’s just a lot of gadgets you can use.
TRG: What do the weighted balls actually do?
RM: For me? Some people use them as a velo booster — at first for me that was the idea. But now, they make my arm feel great. You have to use them right, obviously. You can’t just go out there and chuck them. I have a nice little routine when I throw them, but they make my arm feel fantastic. I haven’t really had a problem all year. So that’s what they really are for me, just part of my arm care.
TRG: So you’ve got to feel pretty good with how this year has gone. This is your pro debut. I don’t know about today but you have been leading the entire minor league in strikeouts after your last few stars. Is this — I don’t want to say surprising — but are you meeting your expectations or are you exceeding your expectations?
RM: I think a little bit of both. I’m feel like I’m kind of a perfectionist. When I go out there I want to dominate. I want to make hitters look silly and I want to dominate the game. So yes, I am meeting expectations. But at the same time, I also think maybe I’m exceeding my expectations some. I didn’t necessarily think I was going to have this much success my first year. There was definitely a struggle in June, but I was quick to make the adjustment and everything’s been working well and falling into place for me nicely.
TRG: I would think you should be pleased.
RM: Yes, very.
TRG: Well it’s all working pretty well, I would say. And hopefully, it keeps rolling for the last six weeks, and you complete a great first year.
RM:That sounds good to me.
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