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A Look at the Remarkable Improvement for Florida State Baseball's Dylan Silva

No other reliever on the Seminoles staff has been relied upon more this season that the left hander and he is finally showing why.

By RaysnNoles

It is safe to say for the first few months of the season whenever reliever Dylan Silva took the mound there was a collective grumbling by Florida State fans. You watched every pitch holding your breath waiting for that four pitch walk or double that allowed a run to score. The frustration was unfortunately warranted because as you can see with his performance below he was absolutely terrible.

DYLAN SILVA
MONTH BY MONTH PERFORMANCE
MONTH APP BF ERA WHIP H/9 K/9 BB/9 K:BB IS% LOB% GB/FB FIP BABIP BAA OPSa
February 5 35 5.14 2.00 7.72 14.15 10.29 1.38 12.5% 71.4% 1.25 3.71 0.429 0.240 0.744
March 10 74 6.00 1.80 10.20 13.80 6.00 2.30 53.8% 50.8% 0.83 3.22 0.400 0.279 0.791
April 8 56 4.61 1.32 7.24 7.90 4.61 1.71 33.3% 69.6% 1.50 6.49 0.242 0.234 0.862
TOTALS 23 165 5.30 1.65 8.58 11.61 6.31 1.84 36.7% 61.4% 1.15 4.57 0.345 0.256 0.808

Outside of his absurd strikeout rates and low homerun allowed rate which is what makes Silva so dynamic there is nothing he did well. He walked way too many batters, allowed an average amount of hits per nine and struggled with inherited runners. In his 23 appearances he inherited 30 runners, almost 37% (11) of those runners came around to score and his LOB% put him in the below average range which is abnormal for high strikeout pitchers. You will also notice his fluctuations in BABIP, I encourage you to watch these two short videos for clarification.

(College BABIP is generally higher, Florida State pitchers had a .321 BABIP as a team this season)

So something had to give, Silva was on the bad end of some luck and coaches were betting it wouldn't continue an entire season. They were right.

DYLAN SILVA
MONTH BY MONTH PERFORMANCE
MONTH APP BF ERA WHIP H/9 K/9 BB/9 K:BB IS% LOB% GB/FB FIP BABIP BAA OPSa
Feb-April 23 165 5.30 1.65 8.58 11.61 6.31 1.84 36.7% 61.4% 1.15 4.57 0.345 0.256 0.808
May-Jun 12 75 1.42 1.26 6.63 13.74 4.74 2.90 7.7% 79.2% 2.67 1.95 0.389 0.215 0.566

Since May hit, he has had far greater success and some of the numbers suggest he probably was a bit unlucky as his extremely high BABIP. His command has improved which has allowed his strikeouts to increase and walks to diminish. In his 12 appearances he inherited 13 runners and only 1 of them has scored, strikeouts have played a key role in that but so has his increased ground ball rate. Notice his groundball to flyball rate has nearly doubled in the last month, as of right now there are only 5 relief pitchers in all of MLB with a ratio of 2.67 or better.

With two more appearances this season Silva will crack the all time top ten in appearances at 37 and is alone by himself in 10th place with relief apperances. Right now he has 12.35 strikeouts per nine this season. He also has a shot of finishing with a top ten in that too, with a 12.63 K/9 Danny Rosen is currently sitting at tenth all time. Needless to say the Noles are very fortunate to have a reliever like Dylan Silva, it also looks like he will be heavily relied on this weekend as Florida State faces Florida with a trip to Omaha on the line.

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