The Yankees missed out on Kansas City Milwaukee right handed Zack Greinke over the weekend, but there are still some other options out there. The headliner–at least that we know of–is Gavin Floyd. Some could’ve considered Ricky Nolasco the best available pitcher, but he is optimistic about being able to stay with the Marlins. That leaves the White Sox’s right hander as the available trade piece.
We’ve heard, though, very little on Floyd of late and the post from MLBTR gives us no indication as to what the White Sox would like in return. Before we discuss that, let’s see if Floyd is someone worth trading for. The first thing we have to decide is whether it makes economic sense to trade for Floyd. To Cot’s we go.
Floyd is signed through the 2012 season, with a $9.5M club option for 2013. Next year he makes $5M and in 2012 he makes $7M. At those prices, Floyd is outrageously affordable. In terms of age, he’ll be 28 when the 2011 season starts.
Now let’s move on to production. Since joining the Chicago rotation full time in 2008, Floyd has averaged 196 innings pitched, a 3.99 ERA (114 ERA+), a 1.285 WHIP, 7.0 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, and 2.45 K/BB. Those are good numbers. He’s given up exactly one homer per nine innings in that stint as well, which is a negative for someone possibly joining the Yankees. However, U.S. Cellular Field had the highest park factor (1.545) for home runs in 2010 (Yankee Stadium had the third highest at 1.420) so that could contribute a bit.
Running counter to that, though, are Floyd’s batted ball numbers. In each of the last three years, he’s lowered his FB% (39.7% in ’08; 33.2 in ’09; 32.1 in ’10) while upping his ground ball numbers (41.2/44.3/49.9). That signals a positive trend in batted ball data, especially considering Yankee Stadium. As a result, his HR/FB numbers have trended downward (11.8/11.2/7.6), as has his tRA, which is a contact based form of keeping track of runs. In short, the harder contact you give up the worse you look. Since just posting Floyd’s raw tRA numbers is unhelpful, I’ll post his tRA+ (think ERA/OPS+) numbers instead, courtesy of StatCorner: 99 in ’08; 112 in ’09; and 114 in ’10.
Over the last few years, Floyd has reduced his fly balls, increased his ground balls, and given up weaker contact. On top of all of those numbers, his FIPs have improved yearly as well: 4.77, 3.77, 3.46. Floyd is doing what pitchers in their mid-late twenties should do: adjusting his game and still producing results.
Gavin Floyd may not be the sexiest name in the world in terms of starting pitching, but he’s a solid pitcher who comes at a pretty cheap monetary cost. In terms of what it would take to get him, I have no idea since I can’t speak intelligently on the needs of the Chicago White Sox. I am, however, confident in saying that any possible deal for Floyd would not need to include Jesus Montero.
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4 Responses to On to Floyd?
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TIQ IQ
Floyd is exactly the type of pitcher the Yankees need right now, a guy who can soak up innings, get ground balls, keeps the ball in the park and can strike out guys at a decent clip. If he threw left-handed he’d be a no brainer. As disappointing as this offseason has been so far, if they can put together a non-Montero trade package for Floyd I’d be content going into 2011.
Why would the White Sox want to trade their second most affordable pitcher? He’s productive, young and cheap and they just spent a ton on offense between Konerko and Dunn if anything they need to hang on to Danks and Floyd because they won’t be able to sign big name starter with their payroll.
If anything the only 2 starters I could see them trading is Peavy and Jackson and Peavy has no value because he’s hurt and Jackson will make 8 million next season on his last year, this isn’t a ton of money but besides Mark and Peavy he makes the most.
As much as we would love to have Floyd I would think the White Sox need him a lot more, they are trying to win and they are going all in so why would they trade an affordable young arm under team control.
Brian Cashman did an interview today in which he seemed pretty positive the Yankees will be going into the season with the current rotation that they have and in the interview he mentioned Betances, Banuelos, Brackman, Nova, Noesi and Warren as possible pitchers to compete for the job in spring training.
Cashman also mentioned that right now Andy is still leaning towards retirement but “in a month that might change”.
Now this could all be some elaborate smoke screen just to pull the rug out from underneath us and make a big trade (don’t expect Hernandez as Cashman said “that ain’t happening”) but I tend to believe that unless someone becomes available for next to nothing as a cash dump or something that we will more or less see a bunch of kids compete with Mitre for the 5th spot going into spring. There is a possibility of adding a Freddy Garcia or god forbid Braden Looper or some other free agent pitcher but none of the guys on the market present any real potential for the future and none of them are anything more than 4 or 5 guys anyway, so in this situation it is usually a better idea to go with minor league pitching (when you have 4 or 5 pitching depth like we do) and try to flush out the pretenders from those who have potential either in New York or as a trade chip.
I think the best case scenario if Andy retires would be for Brackman to win the 5th spot battle (if we all assume that Nova is just given the 4 spot) because it would give us a young starter with future potential in pinstripes taking the ball every 5th day and more importantly it would mean that Brackman pitched well enough to earn the spot and therefore would be on the road to being a major league pitcher a goal I know a lot of us thought might be over for a minute there. Now I don’t expect that to happen but as I said it’s the best case scenario given the contestants for the job, in reality I would expect it to be Nova and Mitre with a slight chance that Noesi can beat out Mitre and send him to long relief.
Freddy Garcia or Gil Meche.Bet on it.