SAN FRANCISCO — Since spraining a ligament in his left knee five weeks into the season, Tom Murphy has mostly been a ghost. He comes to the ballpark each day, puts in his rehab and goes home. He doesn’t travel with the team, and when they are at home, manager Bob Melvin will go days without interacting with or even seeing the veteran backstop signed to be their No. 2 catcher this season.
That’s by design, Murphy explained.
“It’s been tough,” the 33-year-old catcher said Tuesday from his locker inside the home clubhouse. “I try to stay out of people’s way for the most part because I’m not playing. The last thing I want to do is get in the way of the product out there.”
Giving chase to a pitch in the dirt on a soggy May day in Philadelphia, Murphy felt a pop in his left knee and was given an initial diagnosis of a sprained MCL. He wouldn’t need surgery and could be back in six weeks, the team said.
More than four months later, Murphy has still not resumed catching and isn’t expected back before the end of the season. But progress made in the past week gives him more than just hope that he will be physically able to fulfill the second year of two-year, $8 million contract he signed before this season.
“In my mind there’s no could,” he said. “You know, like, none of those questions exist. There’s no question about it.”
The one time Murphy accompanied the team on the road since the injury was in Los Angeles after the All-Star break, making a brief cameo in the visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium. The primary objective of the trip, though, was to get a second scan on his knee, which revealed the ligament had not healed at all in 10 weeks since the initial injury.
Murphy was able to hit, he was able to throw, he was able to run. But he could not — and still can’t — do the one task essential to his position: squat.
“That’s what really prompted us to get another look at it,” Murphy said.
After his follow-up appointment in Los Angeles, Murphy opted to receive an injection of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) that, in effect, restarted the healing process. He was told it would take another 2-3 months for the PRP to fully repair the ligament and six weeks before he would feel it having an effect.
Right on cue, Murphy ramped up his base running this week, about six weeks since receiving the injection.
“That’s never really been the issue in all this,” Murphy said of running the bases. “It felt like I couldn’t do my job before. Whereas now I can start to be able to do those things.”
While “deep flexion” in his knee — or, in layman’s terms, assuming the squat — remains an issue, the first sign of the PRP going to work makes Murphy optimistic that the rest of the treatment will meet its estimated timeline, too. He expects to be fully …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
