Dylan Floro is changing things up against lefties this season

It’s still ridiculously early in the season, and the sample sizes are small, but they are all we have right now, and it’s been so far, so good for the Dodgers bullpen.

Dodgers relief pitchers have a 1.39 ERA through 17 games, and are second in FanGraphs WAR, behind only Oakland.

Dylan Floro has yet to allow a run in seven appearances, allowing only three hits and a walk in 6⅔ innings while striking out seven. He’s also in the 97th percentile in MLB in average exit velocity allowed, only 80.6 mph per Baseball Savant.

“I think overall, his stuff is better. His sinker is now he’s sitting 93, averaging a little north of 93, and there’s some 94s in there,” Dave Roberts said Monday. “The sinker has the run and the depth that I remember seeing in ‘18. The slider location has been more consistent, and his changeup to lefties has been really a game changer.”

Floro in his career has been much better against right-handed batters (.240/.290/.344) than left-handers (.297/.367/.426), though it’s been a rollercoaster for him against lefties with the Dodgers:

This year, Floro has thrown his changeup 19 times in 34 pitches to left-handers (55.9 percent), and he’s gotten seven of his 10 outs against lefties with that pitch, including all three strikeouts. He only threw the changeup to lefties 8.6 percent of the time with Los Angeles in 2018-19 combined.

It’s helped, since with the three-batter minimum rule for relievers, he’s faced lefties 43.5 percent of the time so far (again, small sample size) compared to 33.8 percent last year.

“It was a big focus for me this offseason, knowing you’d have to face three guys, so chances of me facing a lefty are pretty high,” Floro said Monday. “I knew I was going to need something for the lefties to stay off just sitting on my two-seam [fastball].”

Floro said he threw his changeup more as a starting pitcher in the minor leagues, but has struggled with the pitch as a reliever in the majors, throwing it just 14.1 percent of the time to left-handers in his four previous seasons.

“I just never felt too comfortable with it, and tried to overpower it too much,” he said. “Now, instead of just trying to throw it as hard as I possibly can, I’m just letting the grip work.”

Links

• Kiké Hernandez continued his road trip diary series with Jorge Castillo at the Los Angeles Times. I found fascinating the differences of when players eat on game day compared to a normal, non-pandemic situation.
• Craig Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus: “A phrase laden with sarcasm last year is one uttered with a comparable amount of earnestness this year: Where would the Dodgers be without A.J. Pollock?”
• Bill Shaikin at the Los Angeles Times wrote about MLB considering playing in a bubble for the postseason.
• Jeff Passan at ESPN has a little more on what a bubble postseason might look like logistically.
• In this week’s MLB power rankings at ESPN, they picked the biggest surprise for each team. Jake McGee with his hot start in the bullpen was their pick for the Dodgers, who were rated first in baseball overall.
• Molly Knight at The Athletic dug deeper into six stories of memorial cutouts at Dodger Stadium this season, including that of comedian Brody Stevens.
• Henry Schulman at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about what Giants reliever Sam Selman gleaned from living with Scott Alexander of the Dodgers. Also in that house last winter was Wednesday Padres starter Kyle Davies.
• Along with Players of the Week announced each Monday, MLB now also includes a league-wide play of the week. Last week’s honors went to Chris Taylor for his walk-off outfield assist in San Diego on Wednesday: