One Month into the Jorge López for Dylan Floro Trade

On July 28, the Minnesota Twins traded relief pitcher Jorge López to the Miami Marlins for fellow relief pitcher Dylan Floro. This week, we passed the one-month anniversary of said trade.

Unlike the win-win Luis Arráez for Pablo López, Jose Salas, and Byron Chourio trade executed between Kim Ng and Derek Falvey this prior off-season, this trade deadline swap has been anything but. 

Here are Floro and López's numbers through the first month with their respective new teams:

• López - Marlins - 9.26 ERA, 5.32 FIP, 5.63 xFIP, 11 2/3 IP, 20 hits given up, 12 earned runs, nine walks, eight strikeouts, 6.17 K/9, .442 BABIP, 58% LOB%
• Floro - Twins - 6.30 ERA, 3.07 FIP, 4.39 xFIP, 10 IP, 15 hits given up, seven earned runs, five walks, eight strikeouts, 9.00 K/9, .455 BABIP, 66.7 LOB%

López's first five batters faced with the Marlins went well, giving up zero runs and zero hits through 1.2 innings pitched, but then the wheels began to fall off. Over Lopez's next 19 batters faced, he gave up eight hits and accumulated three earned runs while only striking out one batter and leaving just 55.6% on base. 

Floro's first handful of outings with the Twins went much more smoothly, giving up just three hits and zero earned runs over his first 14 batters faced. Floro's first rough outing came against the Detroit Tigers on August 10 against the Tigers, giving up four hits and two earned runs while facing seven batters over just one inning pitched. 

López and Floro rebounded nicely from their rough outings, with López going two straight outings without giving up a run and Floro going three straight outings without giving up a run. 

Then came the implosions. 

The bulk of López and Floro's inflated numbers are consequences of implosive outings, which occurred at similar times. 

López's implosion came on August 16 against the Houston Astros when he faced six batters, gave up two hits, walked three, and surrendered four earned runs. He recorded just one out.

López became erratic and struggled to keep his pitches in the strike zone, a phenomenon all too familiar to those who follow the Twins. While López's shortcomings are unfortunate, he is no longer the Twins' problem, so it feels unnecessary to harp on his performance too much. 

So, let's shift our focus to Floro. 

Floro's implosive outing came on August 22 against the Milwaukee Brewers when he faced nine batters, gave up six hits, walked zero, and surrendered five earned runs in one inning. 

Floro is an interesting case, as he is a better pitcher than statistics like ERA would suggest. 

Fielding Independent Pitching, or FIP, is a sabermetric that measures what a pitcher's Earned Runs Allowed (ERA) would look like over a certain period if that pitcher were to experience league-average results on balls put in play. Unsurprisingly, FIP strongly correlates to the sabermetric Batting Average on Balls in Play, or BABIP. 

Floro's FIP currently sits at 3.07, which is 3.23 points lower than his ERA of 6.30. 

Floro is a reliever who pitches to contact, so most of the outs he generates will come from either ground outs or flyouts. Being a "pitch to contact" reliever, Floro's primary goal is to generate weak contact, which leads to shallow flyouts or weak groundouts.

Floro has done an adequate job doing that, as evidenced by his Exit Velocity (EV), or the speed of the ball coming off the bat in miles per hour, of 83.9 mph. Unfortunately, balls put into play off of Floro are finding holes and landing for hits, as evidenced by his BABIP of .455, 160 points higher than the league average of .295 for relief pitchers.

Now, the question that needs to be looked at next is whether Floro's poor numbers are a product of bad luck or Floro simply being ineffective. 

To start, the answer for Floro's implosive outing against the Brewers is bad luck, as they were able to essentially BABIP Floro into submission by hitting bloop single after bloop single, leading to an outburst of hits and runs. 

Although Floro's performance against the Brewers was uniquely unfortunate, I think similar conclusions of him being a victim of bad luck can also be made for his other outings. 

This conclusion feels rational because the same phenomenon occurred earlier this season with the Marlins. 

Over Floro's 39 2/3 innings pitched and 171 total batters faced as a reliever for the Marlins this season, Floro's had a 4.54 ERA and a 2.77 FIP. Similar to his performance with the Twins, there is a dramatic difference between Floro's ERA and FIP. 

Floro is struggling now and has all season, but reason for optimism lies within his underlying metrics and his most recent outing against the Texas Rangers this past Sunday. 

In his outing against the Rangers, Floro walked leadoff hitter Mitch Garver but was then able to get Travis Jankowski to strikeout on a high and outside fastball, Adolis Garcia to strikeout on a breaking ball down and away, and Jonah Heim to groundout to shortstop Carlos Correa, ending the top of the 13th inning. 

The Twins were then able to capitalize, winning on a walk-off walk manufactured by centerfielder Michael A. Taylor. 

Although a small sample, Floro's outing was encouraging and could be a sign of things to come.

Floro becoming even a semi-reliable relief pitcher that can complement the front of the bullpen in Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Caleb Thielbar, Emilio Pagán, and the potentially returning soon Brock Stewart would be an encouraging development for a team that has had back-end of the bullpen struggles all season. 

One month in, the López for Floro trade hasn't worked well for either team. But there is reason to believe Floro's performance could turn around rather quickly.

What do you think of the López for Floro trade? Do you think Floro can turn things around? Comment below.