Nationals’ Daniel Murphy finishes second in 2016 NL MVP voting

Daniel Murphy won the Players’ Choice Award for the NL’s Most Outstanding Player last week, as voted on by his fellow players, which meant a lot to the Washington Nationals’ second baseman.

“One of the things I’ve said in my career before is, ‘I don’t know that I’ll always play well, but I hope they say I always play hard,” Murphy said after learning he’d won, “and to be recognized by my peers, the best players on the planet, to be voted for this award, it truly is a humbling experience.”

Tonight, Murphy finished second in the voting for NL MVP for 2016, receiving one first-place vote and 11 second-place votes, earning 245 points total, behind the 2016 NL MVP, Kris Bryant of the Chicago Cubs, who received 29 of 30 first-place votes and 415 points overall.

Murphy, 31, finished the first year of his 3-year/$37.5M deal with the Nationals with a .347/.390/.595 line and career highs in doubles (47), triples (5) and home runs (25) in 142 games and 582 plate appearances, over which he was worth a career-best 5.5 fWAR.

As the Nationals noted in their Season in Review before the postseason, “... among players to play at least 50% of their games at second base, Murphy joined Rogers Hornsby (H.O.F., 1942) as the only second basemen to hit at least .347 with 25 home runs, 104 RBI and a .595 slugging percentage.”

Murphy’s .347 AVG was NL’s second-best this season, behind only Colorado Rockies’ infielder DJ LeMahieu (.348).

Murphy finished 7th in OBP, 1st in slugging percentage, second in wRC+ (at 156, behind only the Reds’ Joey Votto, 158), and was 6th amongst NL hitters in fWAR.

Murphy earned the Silver Slugger at second base last week as well.

Murphy talked about his ability to get comfortable in the first season with his new team on the awards broadcast tonight.

“I think it’s just a testament to the players in Spring Training and Jayson Werth and Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmerman and Anthony Rendon, all these guys,” Murphy said on the MLB Network.

“I probably should a name a pitcher as well too, I’ll go with Max Scherzer since he won the Cy Young last night, but these guys were all so accommodating to not only me and my family on the way into Spring Training in Viera, but also Zim actually helped us get set up in Washington as well too, so they made transition as seamless as possible. It may have been a little touch-and-go there because we weren’t sure what to do with each other since we had been trying to kill each other for the last five years, six years, when I was in New York.”