The Dodgers Are Home to One of Baseball’s Best Pen Arms

When the trade was announced it all felt so odd. The Dodgers gave up 2017 fourth-round pick, James Marinan and young relief pitcher Aneurys Zabala in a deal that netted Los Angeles Dylan Floro, a pitcher who was amidst his third big league season, his first with major league success.

Why? Why did the Dodgers part way with prospects that, quite frankly, were not worth the return? Sure, part of it was the sheer necessity for a relief pitcher but to give up two top 30 farm hands, there needed to be a bigger reason. There was. Floro had quietly been one of the games best pitchers with Cincinnati and the Dodgers, a team keen on picking up players who a shine brightest under the radar, jumped on the opportunity before it was too late.

Let’s do a quick history lesson first. Dylan Floro was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays back in 2012 in the 13th round. He was a college player at Cal State Fullerton and the Rays knew they stole a player with a ton of potential late in the draft.

Floro proved it.

In his first three minor league seasons, he dominated as a starting pitcher, working with a combined 2.71 ERA from 2012-’14.

In 2015, Floro struggled but the Rays were not concerned. Struggling is par for the course in baseball. The following year, Floro, a fifth-year pro, made his Major League debut. This is where the story truly begins.

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Floro played 12 games with the Rays in 2016. He had a 4.20 ERA and, for the Rays, there was not enough incentive to keep him around Tropicana Field. The Rays sent him down to Triple-A Durham where he would play his final few months in the Rays’ organization. That offseason, he was designated for assignment and claimed quickly by the Cubs.

That was on January 11, 2017. Just under a month later, the Cubs DFA’d Floro who went unclaimed and was sent straight to the Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate in Iowa. He would be there through the start of the season only to be called up and sent down a total of five times before July, the month he would yet again be DFA’d by Chicago.

Semi-comedically, it was the Dodgers that claimed Floro from the Cubs only to DFA him that same August. Floro, who went unclaimed once more, finished out the season with the Triple-A Oklahoma City Dodgers and elected free agency that offseason.

He signed a minor league deal with the Reds.

Two weeks into the young 2018 season, Floro was called up. He came, he saw and he conquered. In 25 games and 36.1 innings, Floro had a 2.75 ERA and a 181 ERA+. He was dominating but nobody knew about him. Re-enter the Dodgers.

The team’s bullpen was getting torn apart. Daniel Corcino was pitching from the pen for the Boys in Blue alongside Wilmer Font and Brock Stewart. Yimi Garcia got hurt and the Dodgers badly needed another reliever.  They went and got Floro (for the second time) for a price that was arguably too high.

It was from here that Dylan Floro became the quietest best reliever in baseball.

Floro was amazing with the Reds. No doubt about it. In xwOBA, a stat used to measure the on-base average of a player based on how hard a ball was hit as well as how valuable the action was to get the player on base, Floro ranked in the top 14.8 percent of Major League baseball pitchers, both starters and reliever, in that metric.

But, his time in Los Angeles vaulted the more or less unknown reliever to the top of the charts. By seasons end, Floro had an xwOBA of .254, the 17th best mark in baseball. That’s 17th out of 274 by the way. Floro was in the top 6 percent of all pitchers in that stat, four positions better than third place Cy Young finisher, Aaron Nola.

In expected slugging percentage against, a statistic that works in the same fashion to xwOBA, Floro finished the season ranked 13th of 274 pitchers, the top 4.7 percent of the league and one spot lower than Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom.

You read that correctly. Dylan Floro, the reliever the Dodgers acquired on the Fourth of the July, is very much in the same conversation as Jacob deGrom.

Amongst relievers, Floro was 22nd of 191 in left on base percentage, stranding 83.3 percent of runners against him and he also ranked in the top 2 percent of pitchers in percentage of balls barreled up at just 2.6 percent.

You could argue that it was a fluke, sure. But, when a player posts numbers this high I prefer to look at it like he set a ceiling. Floro’s 241 ERA+ with the Dodgers suggests he is capable of massive production and even if he cuts the number in half in 2019, the Dodgers will still have an ultra-productive middle-relief option.

Floro’s regression in 2019 would drop him back from elite and amongst the very best in the league to an extremely solid reliever. If you add .030 to his xwOBA, Floro ranks 69th in the league tied with James Paxton and a pitcher who utterly tortured the Dodgers in Nathan Eovaldi.

Floro was a statistical juggernaut in 2018. He set personal highs by lightyears and he developed into one of Dave Roberts most trusted relievers. When the Dodgers made the trade for the pitcher you had never heard of last July and parted ways with prospects you did not want to see go, there was a reason. Floro seized every opportunity to prove it.