In a season overshadowed by three NL players hitting 57 or more home runs, Florida Marlins star Cliff Floyd put up an incredible year overshadowed by fellow sluggers in his league.
With another MLB season of subdued offense, uppercut swings and plenty of strikeouts in the books, it can feel jarring to look back at the seemingly inflated stats from the turn of the century amid baseball’s Steroid Era.
Perhaps no season stood out more in this timeframe than 2001, coming three years after both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record, with McGwire setting the new record with 70 longballs in 1998.
The 2001 season saw that record fall once more, this time to slugging great Barry Bonds, who hit 73 home runs in a season that also saw Sosa hit 64 dingers while Luis Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks managed 57 homers himself.
Beneath those three MVP-worthy campaigns were a plethora of incredibly impressive offensive seasons that would be lauded by the baseball press if they were to occur in today’s game. With an MVP voting ballot that looked like this, there are endless options to explore when thinking about overlooked seasons:
For this piece, I want to focus on one of the men who tied for 22nd place in this year’s MVP voting, Florida Marlins slugger Cliff Floyd.
One look at Floyd’s Baseball Reference page would lead one to conclude that he had a very solid career – he posted 25.9 WAR in his career, hit 340 doubles and 233 home runs and retired just shy of 1,500 career hits. No one would mistake him for a Hall of Famer or generational talent, but baseball fans remember Floyd as a formidable slugger who hung around the league for a while.
While the 2001 Marlins team he was on managed just a fourth-place finish with a 76-86 record, Floyd was a conspicuous bright spot on an otherwise forgettable team. On top of posting 6.6 WAR, Floyd scored 123 times while slugging 44 doubles and 31 home runs, driving in 103 runs while adding 18 stolen bases as well.
Floyd ultimately slashed .317/.390/.578/.968, good enough for a 150 OPS+ in a season where seemingly every team had a player hit for a .300 average with 20+ HRs and 100+ RBI. Though Floyd’s accolades for the season didn’t go beyond the lone All-Star appearance of his career and a 22nd place in NL MVP voting, the lefty slugger was a season-long offensive stalwart.
Floyd’s wildly impressive numbers in 2001 were also mostly split-neutral – holding a .972 OPS against right-handed pitchers and a .957 OPS against lefties, neutralizing the then-often-used left-handed specialist.
Though Floyd was a more potent slugger at home with a 1.047 OPS, he still hit 15 of his 31 home runs away from Miami Gardens while still managing an .899 road OPS. Floyd’s sensational season appeared to be even greater through the first half of the season, in which the slugger slashed .342/.414/.623/.1.037 before slowing down to a still solid but muted .878 OPS in the second half.
Still driving in 103 runs on the year, Floyd was effective with men on and with runners in scoring position, hitting 17 of his 31 home runs with at least one runner on base. With RISP, Floyd posted a 1.155 OPS with 25 extra-base hits and 33 walks to just 23 strikeouts, living up to his status as the most dangerous hitter in the Florida lineup.
Floyd also turned it on late in games throughout the 2001 season, compiling a .342 batting average and 1.070 OPS in innings 7-9, with all four of his triples during the season coming within the late innings.
The power Floyd presented also took on different forms throughout the season – while 30 of his 31 home runs were on fly balls, he didn’t manage a single fly ball hit that didn’t leave the yard. Conversely, Floyd hit .851 on line drives, accounting for 41 of his 44 doubles and 103 of his 176 hits in 2001.
As for the most noticeable split that emerged when looking at Floyd’s 2001 campaign? It’s night-and-day. Literally.
Floyd thrived in night games for the 2001 Fish, hitting .343/.404/.630/1.035 under the lights, with 27 of his 31 home runs on the season coming during the evening. When the Marlins were tasked with playing a day game, Floyd’s typically monstrous numbers became a bit pedestrian.
In 40 day games, Floyd hit .243/.349/.431/.780, an average offensive line at the time that paled in comparison to Floyd’s output in essentially every other circumstance throughout the season. The slugger’s constant ability to get on base, with an OBP still over 100 points higher than his batting average, helped to keep his day game numbers relatively afloat.
Though Floyd still did drive in 103 runs, it’s fair to wonder how some of the counting stats would have looked if the Marlins had a better-constructed lineup. While third baseman Mike Lowell also hit the century-mark in RBI in a solid offensive season, the lineup featured a few notable dead spots as well. Luis Castillo, Álex González and Eric Owens all finished with an OPS+ of 82 or lower, with Owens posting a paltry mark of 68 OPS+.
While the Marlins did get a great year from utility player Kevin Millar and above-average seasons from Charles Johnson, Derrek Lee and Preston Wilson, it wasn’t nearly enough to stay competitive in an NL East that featured future Hall of Famers in their primes on the Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets.
Floyd ultimately finished sixth in MVP voting among other NL East players, finishing behind Brian Jordan, Jimmy Rollins, Bobby Abreu, Mike Piazza and Chipper Jones. Jones and Piazza are Hall of Famers while Abreu and Rollins continue to receive consideration on current ballots.
Though 2001 served as an unquestionable peak of Floyd’s career, he still had plenty more left in the tank following his incredible campaign. The following season, Floyd played for the Marlins, Montreal Expos and Boston Red Sox in a season that saw him manage 4.6 WAR and a 141 OPS+ alongside 43 doubles and 28 home runs.
Following the nomadic 2002 campaign, Floyd settled in for a four-year tenure with the New York Mets, putting together an excellent campaign in his third season with the club in 2005.
In his age-32 season, Floyd posted 4.7 WAR across 150 games with 22 doubles, 34 home runs and a 127 OPS+. Floyd finished as the third-most valuable Met that season behind David Wright and Pedro Martínez while finishing 26th in NL MVP voting.
From there, Floyd spent two seasons as a role-player on contending teams, first with the 2007 Chicago Cubs who won the NL Central before spending a year with the Tampa Bay Rays, who won the American League pennant in 2008.
After a brief 10-game stint with the San Diego Padres in 2009, Floyd retired following the conclusion of the season.
While many fans fondly remember Floyd as a solid, likable player from an era with a seemingly endless amount of sluggers, his 2001 campaign remains incredibly impressive. Not just in comparison to the offensive seasons of today that lack the lofty numbers that were once commonplace, but even in comparison to his contemporaries in 2001.
Although Floyd finished 22nd in NL MVP voting in 2001, his 6.6 WAR was higher than 11 of the players who finished above him in voting, including all five of the fellow NL East players to beat out Floyd in that year’s balloting.
Though it may be easy to discredit monstrous offensive seasons from the turn of the century as being a product of its time, the accomplishments from that era’s hitters shouldn’t be forgotten. With Floyd’s stellar 2001 season, the lens in which you consider the performance ultimately doesn’t matter – it was just a wildly impressive performance over the course of a 162-game season.
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