It evidently doesn’t hurt to have maybe the best defensive first baseman in baseball history working in your broadcast booth.
In need of a mentor for Daniel Murphy, the Mets have enlisted Keith Hernandez’s services. The tutorials are underway in Port St. Lucie, after general manager Omar Minaya called Hernandez requesting that he help ease Murphy’s transition to first base. Hernandez and Murphy have spent the last two days working on fundamentals.
“It’s not an easy position,” Hernandez said yesterday. “You can lose a lot of ballgames out there if you have a bad first baseman.”
With Carlos Delgado nowhere in sight, the starting job belongs to Murphy. Fernando Tatis is also back at first base to take some at-bats against lefties. It represents a 180-degree shift for Murphy from last spring, when he entered camp as the team’s left fielder.
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That experiment was flushed after Murphy struggled to handle the position and Delgado hit the disabled list in May to undergo hip surgery that ultimately ended his season. Murphy played 101 games at first base and wasn’t a disaster.
“If I stayed in left field I might not have stayed in the big leagues, so it gave me an opportunity at a new position,” Murphy said.
Hernandez previously worked with John Olerud and Todd Zeile at first base after they joined the Mets, but Murphy — given his relative lack of experience at the position — ranks as the bigger challenge for the 11-time Gold Glove winner.
“I do like [Murphy’s] aggressiveness,” Hernandez said. “He’s always got the thought of getting the lead runner. He likes to go in the hole after a ball and he’s just got to learn when it’s not his ball, when he needs to get back to the bag.”
Hernandez said he intends to consult infield coach Chip Hale and manager Jerry Manuel about continuing into spring training with Murphy. But Hernandez, who lives near the Mets’ training complex, will also have the benefit of watching his pupil from the booth during spring training.
“It’s my job to get as much information out of [Hernandez] as I can,” Murphy said. “I am quite eager to get the games started in spring training, because there is a lot for me to learn.”
Hernandez said Murphy is on the right track.
“It was difficult circumstances for Dan last year to move over to first base with hardly any experience and basically learning on the job on the major league level,” Hernandez said. “That’s a lot to ask and he really did admirably. It was much better than I expected.”
⇒First baseman Mike Jacobs, who came up in the Mets’ system and was part of the trade with the Marlins for Delgado in 2005, is closing in on a minor league contract to return to the team, according to ESPN.com. . . . The Mets avoided arbitration with Angel Pagan by signing him to a one-year contract worth $1.5 million.