![\"David](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/murphy-aug15.jpg\")
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Given his pedigree, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that David Murphy<\/a> has staked a strong claim as the best major league position player in Baylor history. The 2003 first-team All-American<\/a> was\u00a0a first-round pick in that\u00a0summer’s\u00a0MLB draft, going 17th overall to the Boston Red Sox<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since then, he has played almost\u00a01,100 games in the big leagues — the most of any Baylor Baseball alum — and on Sunday, he became the first Bear to reach 100 career home runs in the major leagues<\/a>.<\/p>\n After breaking into the majors with the Red Sox in 2006-07, Murphy spent the next 6 seasons with the Texas Rangers, where he was part of the Rangers’ only two World Series teams (2010 and 2011). He then spent a year and a half\u00a0in Cleveland, lending a veteran presence to a young Indians squad, before the Los Angeles Angels traded for him in late July as part of a push to the playoffs.<\/p>\n The 33-year-old Murphy’s historic home run on Sunday was his first as an Angel, but came as part of an impressive day; he went 3-for-6 and not only homered, but also drove in the winning run with a two-out, bases-loaded hit in the 11th inning.<\/p>\n Looking at his entire career, Murphy leads all Baylor big league alumni in\u00a0virtually every batting statistic: career hits, runs, doubles, home runs, RBI, stolen bases and walks.\u00a0Among Bears with 300 at-bats or more, he also leads in career batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.<\/p>\n Baylor pitchers have traditionally fared better in the big leagues, led by Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Lyons<\/a>, who went directly from Baylor to the Chicago White Sox in 1923 and stayed there for the next 20 years.<\/p>\n Of course, Murphy isn’t the only Bear in the majors; Rangers closer Shawn Tolleson<\/a>\u00a0pitched for Baylor from 2008-10, and currently sits just outside\u00a0the American League’s top 10 in saves. Two others —\u00a0Max Muncy<\/a> (Oakland A’s; Baylor, 2010-12) and Logan Verrett<\/a> (New York Mets; Baylor, 2009-11) — have seen\u00a0action in the majors this season and are currently at Triple-A.<\/p>\n Sic \u2019em, Bears in the big leagues!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Given his pedigree, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that David Murphy has staked a strong claim as the best major league position player in Baylor history. The 2003 first-team All-American was\u00a0a first-round pick in that\u00a0summer’s\u00a0MLB draft, going 17th overall to the Boston Red Sox. Since then, he has played almost\u00a01,100 games in the big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-athletics","category-honors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}