Marlins continue to round out back end of bullpen by trading for Dodgers’ Dylan Floro
The Miami Marlins continue to beef up their revamped bullpen.
The Marlins on Friday traded for Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Dylan Floro in exchange for reliever Alex Vesia and pitching prospect Kyle Hurt.
Floro, 30, has made 144 big-league appearances, all in relief. His is 14-7 with a 3.33 ERA in his career and had a 2.59 ERA in 25 games for Dodgers last year. Of his career 159 2/3 innings pitched, 109 2/3 have come in the seventh inning or later. He has 139 career strikeouts against 48 walks (13 of which were intentional) over his five-year MLB career, which included stints with the Tampa Bay Rays (2016), Chicago Cubs (2017-2018) and Dodgers (2018-2020). He is under team control through the 2023 season.
Floro should figure into the Marlins’ high-leverage bullpen situations with Anthony Bass and Yimi Garcia.
He has a four-pitch mix but primarily relies on a low-90s sinker and a mid-80s slider. He also has a change-up that he throws almost exclusively to left-handed hitters and a four-seam fastball that he used sparingly in 2020.
According to Statcast, Floro was in the top-10 percentile of qualified MLB pitchers in the 2020 season in opponent barrel rate (2.7 percent, 96th percentile), opponent hard-hit rate (26.7 percent, 95th percentile), opponent average exit velocity (84.6 mph, 95th percentile) and walk rate (4.1 percent, 94th percentile). His career 55 percent groundball rate is well above the MLB average of 45.3 percent.
Floro is the sixth relief pitcher the Marlins have added this offseason along with Bass, Adam Cimber, Ross Detwiler, Ross Campbell and Zach Pop.
Vesia was the Marlins’ 17th-round pick in 2018 and made his MLB debut during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. The 24-year-old lefty struggled in limited big league action, giving up 10 runs (nine earned) over 4 1/3 innings. Vesia compiled a 1.62 career minor-league ERA, holding opponents to a .207 batting average with 138 strikeouts against 26 walks in 100 innings.
Hurt was the Marlins’ fifth-round pick in the 2020 MLB Draft out of the University of Southern California.
This story was originally published February 12, 2021 at 3:26 PM.
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