Giving Floro His Flowers

Last week, a veteran right-hander was designated for assignment. Not long ago, this pitcher was one of the best relievers in baseball. In fact, through the first half of the 2024 season, he maintained an ERA and FIP under 3.00. Yet, over the past couple of months, he has produced some of the ugliest numbers of any reliever in the sport. Following what was arguably the single worst appearance of his career, his team – the eighth he’s been a part of in his big league career – decided enough was enough. His club added him with the intention that he would play a key role in the postseason, but he quickly fell so far down the bullpen depth chart that he dropped off the roster entirely.

Oh, and no, it’s not the guy you’re thinking of. I’m talking about Dylan Floro. Less than two months after scooping him up at the trade deadline, the Diamondbacks DFA’d Floro on Sunday. They released him two days later. His 2024 season almost certainly has come to an early close.

Floro isn’t Craig Kimbrel. He’s never been the Rolaids Reliever of the Year, nor the DHL Delivery Man of the Year, nor the GameStop Late-Game Stopper of the Year, though admittedly, I made the last one up. Floro has been cut from his team’s 40-man roster more times (six) than Kimbrel has been left off the All-Star roster (five). You can tell as much from the headshots on their player pages. Floro looks utterly forlorn, resigned to play another meaningless season of Major League Baseball. Kimbrel is smiling like he thinks he’s pulling off that haircut. That’s the kind of confidence that only comes with nine All-Star appearances:

Indeed, Kimbrel was a potential Hall of Famer before Floro had so much as a single win, hold, or save. Just dating back to Floro’s first full season, in 2018, Kimbrel has made three All-Star teams, racked up 291 saves, and won a World Series, earning upwards of $80 million in the process. Yet, it’s Floro who has thrown more innings with a lower ERA, lower FIP, and higher WAR during that seven-season span. I won’t blame you if you’re still skeptical, but I stand by my assertion that, until quite recently, Floro was one of the top relievers in the game.

When the Diamondbacks acquired Floro at this year’s deadline, I thought it might prove to be one of the smartest, under-the-radar trades of the season. A right-handed pitcher who could keep the ball in the yard was precisely what Arizona’s bullpen needed. Not only did Floro have a 2.06 ERA and 1.0 WAR over his first 51 games with the Nationals, but he also had casually and quietly been one of the league’s more consistently valuable relievers over the past seven years. Since 2018, he had thrown 361 2/3 innings, an average of 60 per 162-game campaign. His FIP had been at least 20% better than league average every year, and he had produced at least 0.6 WAR every season. All in all, from his first pitch in 2018 through July 30, 2024, Floro accumulated 6.7 WAR. That’s an average of just over 1.1 WAR per full season. Only nine relievers compiled more WAR than Floro in that time:

From Josh Hader to Devin Williams, a list like that speaks for itself. It’s such an impressive group of names that I don’t even need to explain why it’s such an impressive group of names. Aside from Floro, the only one who isn’t a star closer is Taylor Rogers, who still happens to be a former All-Star and one of the 10 highest-paid relievers in the league this year. I don’t mean to suggest that Floro is the same caliber pitcher as any of those other arms, but his place on that list is clear evidence he’s had a much better career than most people probably realize.

Floro was a 13th-round draft pick and never a highly ranked prospect. Before he broke out with the Reds in 2018, his age-27 season, he had already been DFA’d by the Rays, the Cubs (twice), and the Dodgers. Even after his first full season, he never lasted more than two and a half seasons with a single team, perhaps implicitly furthering the narrative that he was a journeyman rather than a top-flight reliever.

Whether fairly or not, struggles in higher-leverage spots have also prevented Floro from building a reputation as a back-end weapon. From 2018 through this year’s trade deadline, Floro ranked seventh among all relievers with 5.02 WPA/LI, also known as context neutral wins. That might be even more impressive than his WAR; he trailed only Hader, Emmanuel Clase, Ryan Pressly, Raisel Iglesias, Liam Hendriks, and Williams in WPA/LI. However, his 1.10 WPA in that same time frame was strangely mediocre. Relatedly, only one reliever, Jacob Barnes, had a lower clutch score (-6.41, yikes) than Floro’s -4.17.

In low- and medium-leverage plate appearances during that span, Floro put up a sparkling 2.66 FIP. His opponents managed a pitiful .259 wOBA. To put that in perspective, the league-average numbers in similarly leveraged spots over the same period of time were a 4.24 FIP and a .316 wOBA. Floro’s numbers were elite in comparison. Yet, in high-leverage spots, Floro’s FIP rose to 4.19, while his opponents’ wOBA rose to .337. Conversely, the average pitcher was actually slightly more effective in high-leverage spots, with a 4.21 FIP and .311 wOBA.

A .351 BABIP suggests Floro had worse luck on batted balls in high-leverage spots, which could explain why his wOBA was so much worse than league average when his FIP was not. But how do we explain the massive gulf between his higher- and lower-leverage performances? Maybe he doesn’t have the so-called clutch gene. I can’t disprove that. However, I’m more inclined to believe the vast empirical evidence that tells us clutchness isn’t a sustainable skill, rather than the anecdotal evidence to the contrary. As Michael Baumann wrote in a piece about clutch hitting, “If you want to find the most clutch hitters of tomorrow, you’re better off looking at the best overall hitters of today.” I would say the same about pitchers.

Ultimately, however, it’s beside the point whether or not Floro is inherently worse with the game on the line. What matters is that his results have been worse when they matter most. Surely, that has something to do with why he doesn’t have nearly the same reputation as any other reliever who has racked up more than 6.0 WAR over the past seven years.

I try to avoid using the word “underrated” on this website because it’s fundamentally subjective. However, the Marlins offered up some strong evidence that they undervalued Floro when they traded him to the Twins last season. Over the first few months of the 2023 campaign, Floro’s surface-level numbers were poor (4.54 ERA pre-trade). So were Jorge López’s stats in Minnesota (5.09 ERA), and thus the two sides came together on a change-of-scenery deal. However, a quick glance at almost any of the underlying numbers would tell you Floro was having a better season. He also had a much longer track record of success:

Outside of a great first-half run with the Orioles in 2022, López was a failed starter and a replacement-level bullpen arm. Floro was a proven reliever getting killed by a .397 BABIP. Yet, the Marlins saw López as the wiser investment.

After the trade, I think Floro became even more underrated. Both he and López posted worse ERAs with their new teams and were eventually DFA’d before the end of the season. It would be easy for a casual observer to mentally group them together as similar pitchers. However, all of Floro’s ERA estimators remained significantly better than average during his time in Minnesota; a .412 BABIP was the primary culprit behind his 5.29 ERA.

Thus, Floro finished the 2023 campaign with a 2.96 FIP and 1.2 WAR, but his 4.76 ERA and late-September release put a damper on his first trip to free agency. He ended up signing with the Nationals for $2.25 million, significantly less than he had earned the year before in his final season of arbitration eligibility. And while his strong run before the trade deadline this season made it look like he might get to cash in this coming winter, his recent performance means he’ll most likely have to settle for a minor league deal.

Over 15 appearances with Arizona, Floro posted a 9.37 ERA, 6.29 FIP, and -0.4 WAR. His opponents produced a .404 wOBA and .394 xwOBA. On September 7, he gave up five earned runs. Two outings later, he gave up another five. The 10 earned runs he allowed over his final three appearances were easily the most he’s given up in any three-game span of his career. Moreover, he allowed back-to-back home runs in his final appearance. It was the first time he has ever allowed two home runs in a game, let alone two home runs in the same inning, let alone two home runs to consecutive batters. Neither would have been a home run at more than eight MLB ballparks. Unfortunately, Chase Field was one of those eight:

By that point, it seemed like Floro was simply exhausted. In his age-33 season, he was at a career high in innings pitched, and he was regularly being asked to record more than three outs. His average sinker velocity was down a mile per hour after the trade (from 90.3 mph to 89.3 mph), and it was sitting at 87.7 mph in his final appearance:

Sometimes, it seems shortsighted when a team cuts a player immediately following a terrible outing. In this case, it’s hard to find fault with Arizona’s decision.

All of this means that Floro has now been released in each of the past two seasons. As he approaches his mid-30s, his chances of ever shedding the “underrated” label are rapidly diminishing. It’s not hard to understand why he is so often overlooked. He was never a notable prospect, and his career got off to a late start. Numerous trades prevented him from establishing himself with any one team. Poor high-leverage numbers kept him from establishing himself as a back-end reliever. The highest BABIP among qualified relievers last season derailed his walk year, and an exhaustion-fueled meltdown ruined what started as the best season of his career in 2024.

It’s a trite cliché that reliever stats are volatile and unpredictable, but we repeat it for a reason. Relievers are subject to wild swings in performance from one year to the next – or one game to the next. Floro, long one of the most undervalued relievers in baseball, knows this better than anyone. Following his sixth career DFA (designation for assignment), it’s about time he received some long overdue DFA (Dylan Floro appreciation).