When the season began for Ty Floyd he was about to begin his junior year at LSU and was heading for his first season as a full-time starting pitcher after splitting time between the bullpen and rotation as a sophomore and a full-time reliever as a freshman back in 2021.
This article was first sent out to those who support the site over on Patreon. Early access is one of the perks that you could get be joining up as a Patron and supporting the work done here at RedsMinorLeagues.com.
Ty Floyd went 7-0 with LSU in 17 starts and two relief appearances. He posted a 4.35 ERA on the season while throwing 91.0 innings with 120 strikeouts and 37 walks. Floyd capped off his season with a 17-strikeout performance against Florida in game 1 of the College World Series finals. His performance during the season led to the Cincinnati Reds selecting him with their 1st round competitive balance pick (38th overall in the draft). With a long season, and such a delay between the end of the season and the draft and signing period, the Reds never asked Floyd to get back on the mound during the season.
For all 2023 Season Reviews and Scouting Reports – click here (these will come out during the week throughout the offseason).
Ty Floyd Scouting Report
Position: Right-handed pitcher | B/T: R/R
Height: 6′ 2″ | Weight: 200 lbs. | Acquired: 1st Round, 2023 Draft | Born: August 28, 2001
Fastball | A plus offering that works in the mid-90’s and touches higher than that with good movement.
Slider | An average offering that works in the low 80’s and can flash above-average.
Curveball | An average offering that works in the mid-to-upper 70’s.
Change Up | A fringe-average pitch that will flash better than that at times.
There’s some good and some not-so-good stuff in the profile for Ty Floyd. Starting out with the good – his fastball jumps off the charts. While it’s not a triple-digit heater, it’s a plus pitch with plenty of velocity and very good movement to it. The not-so-good thing here is that in college he relied on it a ton. As a sophomore he threw it over 80% of the time, and while he lowered that rate to 70% of the time as a junior, very few starting pitchers in today’s game even use their fastball 50% of the time (only 20 pitchers threw a fastball at least 50% of the time in 2023 among the 127 pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched in the big leagues).
As a professional he’ll likely need to throw far fewer fastballs than he did in college. Fortunately for him he’s got three other pitches – all that are at least average-ish to lean on with the slider, curve, and change up. Depending on who you ask, and what day it is, you may get a different answer about which of those offerings happens to be his second best pitch.
The pieces are in place for Ty Floyd to develop in to a big league starting pitcher. But he’s going to have to get out there and show that he can do it, too. He only spent one season in college as a full time starter and he was inconsistent at best. His first four starts of the year came against lower-level competition. Once he began to face SEC teams after that he posted a 5.09 ERA in 74.1 innings pitched. In six of his 17 starts he didn’t get out of the 4th inning.
The fallback option of being a reliever seems like a good thing – his stuff would certainly play in a relief role. Cincinnati is going to give him plenty of chances to continue to develop as a starter because the upside is there for a quality big league starting pitcher, but he’s got plenty of stuff to work on if he’s going to remain in the rotation long term.
Video
Interesting Stat on Ty Floyd
He made four errors in 18 chances while at LSU. That’s a .778 fielding percentage. Opposing runners went 2-for-9 in stolen base attempts while he was on the mound in college.