Toronto Blue Jays Sign Gavin Floyd to a Minor-League Deal
Gavin Floyd has signed a minor-league deal to remain with the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Toronto Blue Jays and Gavin Floyd have agreed to terms on a minor-league deal with an invitation to Major League spring training. The contract means that Floyd will return to the team with which he spent the past season. During the 2016 season, the righty appeared in 28 games with moderate success.
Across that time, he showed a decent ability to strike batters out while limiting walks. These figures are nothing extraordinary, 30 strikeouts and 8 walks in 31 innings, but they are pluses nevertheless. Run prevention, however, was a different story. He allowed 14 earned runs last season, a less than inspiring but not terrible amount for a reliever.
Floyd, who will turn 34 years old in three weeks, has probably found himself with a minor-league deal due to injury concerns rather than his performance levels. Arm issues have long plagued him. Last year, for example, a shoulder injury ended his season in late June. The Toronto Blue Jays revealed that the source of the problem was a torn right lat muscle.
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Perhaps his most severe arm injury came in 2013. On the 28th of April, the Chicago White Sox placed him on the 15-day disabled list with elbow soreness. A subsequent MRI would confirm that he had torn his ulnar collateral ligament and would require Tommy John surgery. He missed the rest of the season while recovering.
A comeback attempt the next season with the Atlanta Braves looked promising at first. He pitched well through his first nine starts, but ultimately fractured his olecranon and missed the rest of the season with the elbow injury. Floyd would attempt another return with the Cleveland Indians in 2015, but he injured his pitching elbow during spring training. The pitcher did manage to toss a few innings of relief before the season was over, and he posted respectable statistics in just 13.1 innings of work.
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All in all, Floyd is a talented pitcher. A former first-round pick, he was once a durable workhorse. Now, however, he is only as productive as him body will allow him to be. If he can stay healthy for the next season, the Toronto Blue Jays could receive some quality work from him. This is a major question, though, and is certainly the reason why he could only find a minors deal. At the very least, Floyd makes for another depth option.