David Murphy started the year well for the Indians, with an .811 OPS for the month of April, which led the team. He cooled off for a couple weeks around the end of that month and in early May, before going on another tear. That tear ended on May 21, when he went 2 for 6 against Detroit, with his 10th double and 5th home run of the season.
That was five weeks ago.
In those five weeks, Murphy has hit .190/.254/.238, with a wRC+ of 41, which is a staggeringly low number. For comparison's sake, when I wrote on Tuesday about how Carlos Santana has gotten back to being the Indians' best hitter, I mentioned the bad slump he had through the middle of May. Carlos' wRC+ was 58, which I called "miserable." Consult your local thesaurus for a synonym for miserable that sounds even worse, and apply it to Murphy.
Murphy has 119 plate appearances in that time, and 105 at bats, but he hasn't hit a single home run. It's been more than two weeks since he had an extra-base hit of any kind, and since then (June 10) he's hitting .049/.152/.049, with a wRC+ of -36. That's not a typo, it's a subtraction symbol, meant to signify that we're talking about a negative number. Did you even know wRC+ could go into the negatives? I guess if nothing else, Murphy is teaching us things.
Murphy has one hit in his last 36 at bats, as things get worse and worse.
The strong start has been overpowered by this slump, his batting line for the season is now below average, and when you factor in weak defense and baserunning, he's been a bit below replacement level. It's sort of surprising that he's still playing as much as he is, but it's not as though the Tribe has other good options.
Murphy's would-be platoon partner in right, Ryan Raburn has a batting line of .207/.257/.259 in 148 PA this season, with a wRC+ of 44, meaning that as bad as Murphy has been over the last five weeks, Raburn has been over the entire season.
Mike Aviles, who's played some outfield this year (though not at all in right field), has been very similar to Murphy, hitting well through early May, but batting .213/.225/.269 in 113 PA since May 10, which works out to a wRC+ of 36.
Pick your poison, all of them will slowly kill you.
Carlos Moncrief is the only outfielder in the farm system who's also on the 40-man roster, and he isn't exactly dominating Triple-A, with a .259/.311/.417 line, but he's been very good in June, hitting .308/.368/.564, with 5 doubles and 5 home runs. He's probably not ready for MLB pitching, but if none of the other options turn things around in the next week or two, I'd bring Moncrief up and see what happens. It could hardly be any worse.