Logstash 5.6.9 breaking upgrade

During a 5.6.9 upgrade and above you may experience the similar to the following error:

[2018-04-19T08:27:00,017][ERROR][logstash.pipeline ] Exception in pipelineworker, the pipeline stopped processing
new events, please check your filter configuration and restart Logstash. {"exception"=>"undefined method tr' for
-73.6992:Float", "backtrace"=>["/usr/share/logstash/vendor/bundle/jruby/1.9/gems/logstash-filter-mutate-
3.3.1/lib/logstash/filters/mutate.rb:344:inconvert_float'", "org/jruby/RubyMethod.java:120:in call'",
"/usr/share/logstash/vendor/bundle/jruby/1.9/gems/logstash-filter-mutate-
3.3.1/lib/logstash/filters/mutate.rb:309:inconvert'", "org/jruby/RubyArray.java:2414:in map'",
"/usr/share/logstash/vendor/bundle/jruby/1.9/gems/logstash-filter-mutate-
3.3.1/lib/logstash/filters/mutate.rb:309:inconvert'", "org/jruby/RubyHash.java:1342:in each'",
"/usr/share/logstash/vendor/bundle/jruby/1.9/gems/logstash-filter-mutate-
3.3.1/lib/logstash/filters/mutate.rb:299:inconvert'",
....

The fix is explained here