After a week of trade rumors involving Tribe outfielder David Murphy, the left-handed hitting right fielder was finally shipped off to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
This season in Cleveland, Murphy was given the opportunity to platoon in the outfield and DH spot with Ryan Raburn and Brandon Moss. The 33-year-old played in 84 games for the Tribe this year, 53 of them starts. The former first round pick started off strong with batting averages over .340 in both May and June, however his production greatly fell off when the calendar flipped to July, where he was hitting .188.
This season, Murphy was due $6M, and has a team option for $7M for the 2016 season (with a $500K buy out). In return for Murphy, the Indians acquired shortstop Eric Stamets, a Dublin, Ohio native. Stamets was a sixth round pick in the 2012 draft out of the University of Evansville. The shortstop was the 22nd ranked prospect in the LAA system (mlbpipeline.com), and could be thought of as a future utility guy.
Stamets’ grades out as following:
Hit: 40
Power: 25
Run: 70
Arm: 60
Field: 55
Getting Murphy off the Indians books was the real issue that the Indians had, as the outfielder was not part of the future of the Indians. Stamets may never reach the major, but if he does that would make the Indians clear winners of this trade.
With Murphy’s departure the Indians may look to begin to play younger outfielders such as Tyler Holt, Tyler Naquin, or James Ramsey to try and figure out what they have with those younger players. The way this season has gone in Cleveland, that might be the best thing moving forward.
As of this writing, Stamets has not been assigned to a MiLB team in the Indians organization, nor has anyone been called up to the 25-man roster to replace Murphy.
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