Gavin Floyd's Sad and Remarkable Run of Bad Luck

Back in the winter, during a conference call with Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins, I asked about the decision to sign Gavin Floyd to a big-league contract. Injuries had confined the veteran right-hander to 21 games over the previous three seasons. A career starter, Floyd had seemed fine while pitching out of the Cleveland bullpen at the end of last season, but that sample size consisted of only seven games and 13.1 innings.

Atkins, of course, worked in the Cleveland front office then. He and his staff had done their due diligence and felt the Floyd signing held minimal risk. Floyd, he said, was ready to start in the big leagues again.

In spring training, I had a long chat with Floyd about his remarkable run of bad luck. He had Tommy John surgery in 2013, and then, astonishingly, broke the big bone in his elbow while pitching twice in consecutive seasons. But he sounded like a man reborn, both physically and mentally, and insisted he could be a competent starter.

"I'm thankful the Blue Jays allowed me to come on this team and be a part of it from the get-go," he told me. "I just want to contribute. My heart is still in starting, and I would love to start. My arm's been feeling great and responding well. If I go to the bullpen, I'm going to try my best to contribute there."

He had a good camp, but Aaron Sanchez earned the last rotation spot, so Floyd went to the bullpen. The job and its lack of predictable routine were foreign to him, but he seemed to adapt. Then last week, in the midst of his most successful stretch of the season, a piece of his upper back muscle tore away from the bone where it attached to the shoulder. His recovery time is estimated at two to three months, which means he may be done for the season.

Upon hearing of Floyd's latest trip to the disabled list, my first reaction was sadness. Injuries are so common in baseball that we often focus on their impact on the team instead of the personal toll they take on an individual player. And injuries certainly have taken a heavy toll on Floyd over the past four seasons.

"There obviously were times when you question a lot of things," he told me in spring training. "How's this going to pan out? Am I done with baseball?"

No doubt those thoughts are haunting him again. He has suffered four serious injuries in four years. He is 33.

It is impossible to know what caused Floyd's latest injury. Simple wear and tear might seem the most obvious explanation; Floyd has been pitching professionally since he was 19 and has logged more than 2,100 innings in the minors and majors combined.

This was his first year as a full-time reliever. Until he had Tommy John surgery in 2013, he had pitched in relief only 12 times in 199 games. This year, he worked in 31 innings over 28 games, solely as a reliever.

The stats say he threw harder than ever, especially in recent outings. According to FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball, both his four-seam fastball and his two-seamer topped his career averages for velocity this year. In fact, Brooks Baseball says that in the past month, both pitches were averaging roughly 95 mph. He never came close to that as a starter.

He also was throwing his curveball roughly twice as often as he did as a starter. The curveball was one reason his swinging-strike rate of 15.4 percent was the highest of his career, by far.

It is not unusual for velocity to increase when a pitcher switches from the rotation to relief. A starter paces himself while a reliever goes full-throttle. And the stats certainly suggest Floyd was doing exactly that.

Starting keeps a pitcher's body and soul on a strict routine: pitch, rest, recover. He follows the same workout and practice pattern during the four days between starts. And during the game, a starter is attuned to the long haul and his pacing reflects that requirement. That was Floyd's physical and mental regimen for his first decade in the big leagues, before TJ surgery struck him down in 2013.

A reliever's work pattern is erratic and requires the pitcher to exert maximum effort in short bursts. A middle reliever might pitch an inning, perhaps two. He might sit for three days then pitch in two consecutive games. He has to "get hot" quickly in the bullpen, and occasionally he will warm up without getting into the game. That has been Floyd's routine this year.

"When you're a bullpen guy, you can go back-to-back days, you can go multiple games, but there's always something," he told Sportsnet's Shi Davidi after he pulled himself from Saturday's game in Chicago. "You try to stay as fresh as you can. I've had days where I've felt tight, and I've had days I've felt sore and been fine and recovered well."

He did not sound like a pitcher comfortably acclimated to a relief role.

No one can be certain whether Floyd's new assignment contributed to his injury. Many pitchers have remained healthy after switching from starter to reliever. But his age, his history as a full-time starter and the long injury layoffs that interrupted his conditioning routine certainly raise questions about the possibility of fatigue.

And fatigue, as Atkins frequently points out, is often a precursor of injury.

Floyd's game log this year has been typical of a middle reliever. In roughly three months, he pitched 28 times. He worked in back-to-back games only three times. He pitched more than one inning in seven games.

After he posted a 1.74 ERA in eight April outings, his ERA jumped to 7.43 over his next 12 games. There was talk of overwork. Manager John Gibbons gave Floyd five days off. His next outing, on June 6, was his worst of the season; he faced eight batters, retired only two, threw 29 pitches and allowed three runs.

But two days later, he started an eight-game stretch in which he allowed only one run. It ended when his shoulder tightened up in Chicago.

None of the foregoing is to suggest anyone is to blame for Floyd's latest injury. He took an assignment and did his best with it. When his performance lagged, the Jays gave him extra time off. And the injury might well have happened even if he were starting.

Pitchers get hurt. The long-term stress causes minute tears to muscles, ligaments and tendons. Through conditioning and treatment, most of those unseen injuries heal. Some don't. Some get worse, and nobody knows until it's too late.

"More than 50 percent of pitchers end up on the disabled list every season, on average for two months-plus, and one-quarter of major league pitchers today wear a zipper scar from Tommy John surgery along their elbows," writes Jeff Passan in his remarkable new book, The Arm.

Floyd has the scar, and a whole lot more.

Floyd certainly had his ups and downs, but given the volatile tendencies of the Jays' bullpen, he will be missed. While help is on the way, the incoming pitchers lack Floyd's ability to cover more than one inning.

Two left-handers built for a maximum of one inning are set to return. Brett Cecil is back from an injury similar to Floyd's, but far less serious, after missing almost six weeks. Franklin Morales, the team's phantom hire late in spring training, is finishing a rehab stint of his own and may get a shot to help the Jays' beleaguered relief corps.

Management will continue to look for pitching depth, both for the rotation and bullpen, either from within the organization or via trade.

That will be a tall task. The market is not bullish for buyers, especially a buyer that traded away a passel of its pitching prospects for a small stable of stars who lifted the Jays into the playoffs last year.

President Mark Shapiro outlined the team's predicament during a recent radio interview.

"One (issue) is taking on money, which I think there'll be an opportunity to do," he said. "The other is giving up talent…

"Obviously, for very good reasons, we have a farm system that is not extremely deep right now. So we've got a challenge in that we've got a very, very robust trade market if you're a seller, not if you're a buyer, because there are very few teams that are clearly selling. So it's a hyper-competitive environment that involves not only money but players."

The Blue Jays do have a few attractive prospects—pitchers Conner Greene and Sean Reid-Foley and outfielder Anthony Alford come to mind—but the club's dilemma is clear: If the farm system is not deep now, is Toronto willing to strip it further to improve the big-league team again in the short term?

Meanwhile, Gavin Floyd again endures the exile of so many injured players who have not achieved star status: gone and generally forgotten. For the fourth straight year, he will face a long and lonely rehab, his future uncertain, while his teammates press on without him.