With almost a week to go before the deadline, the Minnesota Twins struck a deal with the Miami Marlins – again. There’s another López involved, this time Jorge López. In return, the Twins received right-handed pitcher Dylan Floro. It’s a “a change of scenery” for both players.
López has followed up his 2022 All-Star campaign with a disastrous 5.09 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, and 10.3 K-BB%. Floro is having an equally disappointing 2023, sporting a 4.54 ERA, 1.49 WHIP, and 17.7 K-BB%. On the surface, it seems the coverage of the trade is correct; this is nothing more than a low-wattage reliever swap. But that’s not necessarily true.
Jorge López was an All-Star last year thanks to his 2.54 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, and 13.8 K-BB%. However, he had a 6.06 ERA primarily as a starter from 2017-2021, with his expected ERA (xERA) consistently around 5.50. In the last two years, he’s giving up more hard contact through the air. Because he is more of a contact pitcher than one who generates strikeouts, any changes in ground ball and hard contact rates are noteworthy. His ground ball rate has fallen from 58.5% to 48.6%. The fantastic 33% hard contact rate he finished with last year has jumped up to a 45.9% mark this year. López saw sizable velocity gains with his sinker in 2022, likely helping him to break out in such a loud way. His future success could very much be tied to that pitch.
As for explaining the undesirable changes in ground ball and hard contact rates, there is a clear culprit. Opponents are crushing López’s fastball. He’s thrown it significantly higher, with 61.7% of the fastballs he’s thrown being high in the zone or even further up. (He’s usually been below 40%). The optics of the pitch don’t align with that kind of usage. Despite its 97 mph velocity, its spin rate is underwhelming, and therefore it does not have enough “rise” to make it effective.
To a lesser extent, his changeup has also hurt him this season. Although he’s more of a “pitch to contact” player, it doesn’t hurt to get whiffs. Changeups typically have a 15% swinging-strike rate or higher, but López’s is down to just 8.1% now. He had success throwing it considerably beneath the zone, but he has seen it fall in the zone 33.8% of the time compared to 26% last year. López shows a strong preference for throwing the pitch in 2-strike counts. Therefore, it’s important to not leave a changeup floating too high when batters are more likely to be sitting on something offspeed. Getting offspeed pitches down helps generate swings and misses.
Outside of the first month of the season, López has struggled since the trade deadline last year. He has elite upside, but it may or may not manifest. But Floro is kind of the opposite.
Floro has had an xERA of 3.86 or lower in all but one of his last eight seasons. He wasn’t an All-Star in his best season but had an incredible 2.72 xERA with the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers in 2018. He followed up that season with a 4.24 ERA one in 2019, though his xERA was 3.86. 2020-2022 was arguably the best stretch of his career. He rattled off seasons of 2.59, 2.81, and 3.02 (xERAs of 3.35, 3.32, and 3.05, respectively). So why is his 2023 ERA inflated up to 4.54?
Before diving in, it is important to remember that expected stats are not useful in predicting the future. They are descriptive. In general, when opponents have hit Floro’s pitches, he has succeeded at generating weak contact with non-threatening launch angles. But past success in expected stats has not been perfectly accurate indicators of the future.
There is something wrong with Floro. The Pitch Level Value (PLV) of his pitches has dropped. PLV, a statistic created by PitcherList, quantifies how good a pitch is. PLV accounts for velocity, movement, release point, batter handedness, location, and the difference between the pitch and the pitcher’s fastball (if the pitch thrown is not a fastball). It is often the case that depressed PLV can be quickly explained by another statistic about the pitcher. However, there are times when finding the underlying reason is challenging.
Floro’s BABIP could help to explain his recent woes. Normally around .300, Floro has a .395 BABIP this season. That makes sense, considering he’s given up a concerning amount of hard contact this year. Conversely, Floro has a stark difference between his ERA (4.54) and xERA (3.24). xERA factors in the quality of contact, leaving us with a tricky question to answer. It gets even more difficult to figure out why he’s getting hit so much harder than usual.
Floro has given up an increased amount of hard contact on his two most used pitches, the sinker and four-seamer. Unlike Lopez, who saw a massive spike in hard contact because he was throwing fastballs up high, Floro’s locations are mostly the same as they’ve always been. He’s not throwing many meatballs either, so it must be something else.
Perhaps batters are pulling his pitches more, but that’s not the case. Maybe the shape of his sinker has changed, and batters are capitalizing on smaller-than-normal movement to better square up the ball. Unfortunately, that can’t explain it because all of his pitch shapes are the same.
Batters could be sitting on either of his sinker/four-seamer. That typically affects pitchers with only one non-fastball pitch in their arsenal. Either Floro’s slider and changeup have been deemed too filthy for batters to even consider looking for in their at-bats, or Floro has struggled to find the zone enough with those pitches. That would allow batters to happily “spit” on them while they wait for the pitch they want.
The latter point may have some credibility. He’s thrown his slider in the zone only 30.9% of the time, while the MLB average for that pitch is 40.5%. The story is the same with his changeup, with Floro hitting the zone 20% compared to the average 33.3%. It may sound contradictory, considering I just said López would likely perform better if more of his changeups fell below the zone. However, the truth is that there’s a happy medium for every pitcher.
I would be happy to end this investigation with the conclusion that “Floro’s secondaries are not concerning batters enough” and continue on, but skepticism still lingers. Without actually seeing all of Floro’s at-bats, it’s difficult to say what batters were thinking and doing.
Regardless, Floro is having a rough stretch. He’s a player whose career has been full of success. He’s a proven reliever. Lopez had an excellent stretch amidst a very different career than Floro. It certainly depends on the context, but which reliever should the Twins want on their roster? Do you want upside at the cost of past performance? Or a confusingly and newly struggling player who should have a solid floor?
