Mets to overhaul hand signs after Murphy's defection

Daniel Murphy was the toast of New York City last October, helping lead the Mets to the World Series with a historic playoff performance, before jumping ship to join the Washington Nationals - perhaps the only legitimate threat to New York's NL East crown - as a free agent.

The 30-year-old's defection to a rival they'll oppose nearly 20 times this season is causing concern in Mets camp that he'll bring many of their state secrets to the nation's capital. That's why New York, led by third base coach Tim Teufel, is devoting time this spring to revamping its entire sign system - decoys included - from scratch.

"I can put a sign on, take it off, put it back on, take it off," Teufel told Tim Rohan of the New York Times on Sunday. "You can’t follow it all. It happens too quickly. You may think you’ve got it, but you don’t really."

While the Mets are trying to sneak an early change-up by Washington, Nationals manager Dusty Baker is still hopeful Murphy can bring some kind of intelligence from his former employers into his dugout.

"As long as they don’t change too much of their personnel, he could be a tremendous asset to us," Baker said. "I mean, we took one of their spiritual leaders, one of their team leaders. And we didn’t take him; they gave him to us."

Teufel, however, is very confident that the system he's devising won't just confuse the Nats - he expects it to wreak havoc on the rest of the league, too.

"The way I do them," Teufel said, "no one will get them."