The Blue Jays have released lefty Ricky Romero, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca tweets. Romero will make $7.5MM in the last year of a $30.1MM contract he signed in late 2010. He will receive a $600K buyout for 2016.
Romero, the sixth overall pick in the 2005 draft, was once a promising young starter. His best year was 2011, when he posted a 2.92 ERA, 7.1 K/9 and 3.2 BB/9 in 225 innings and finished tenth in AL Cy Young balloting. The following season, though, was a huge step backward — he had a 5.77 ERA and led the league in walks, then had elbow surgery after the season.
After that, Romero never returned to form. He spent much of 2013 in the minors, and the Jays outrighted him in June and then again in October. A knee injury ended his 2014 season after nine minor-league starts, and he had not yet pitched in 2015. According to Brendan Kennedy of the Toronto Star (via Twitter), Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos says that since Romero was in the last year of his deal and was not close to being able to help, there was no reason for the team to keep him.
What a ride. At least he made himself some money
Poor guy, one of the great mysteries of baseball.
Classic case of a one. Year wonder
He had a few good years prior to that All-Star season.
The poster child for why big money extensions for pre-arbitration guys might not always be the best idea for clubs. They don’t all work out well.
His being pre-arb has nothing to do with anything. When he got paid, he was the ace of the club, and the deal was actually very team-friendly for what we thought we were getting. Nobody can predict if/when someone will lose it à la Rick Ankiel.
Signing pre-arb guys to large extensions is how you keep your star players in the fold, so they don’t get too expensive down the line and have to be shipped out. You telling me Trout’s pre-arb contract is a bad idea?
“might not ALWAYS be the best idea”, “they don’t ALL work out”
Nothing ever works out 100% of the time, which makes the original comment nothing more than a statement of this fact.
At the end of the day, the Jays were 100% justified in giving Romero his contract, and it was in fact a brilliant move.
It may have been justified when it was done, but the original comment was simply saying they don’t always work out in the long run, and in this case, it clearly didn’t work, at all. Pre-arb extensions do tend to be important for cost control of players deemed stars but there’s always going to be a level of risk involved in them, as this case dictates. Hard to call it a brilliant move with this type of result.
An AAV of $6MM for a SP2 type is a STEAL in this market. Would have been near impossible to predict such a drastic collapse.
Had he become/remained a pitcher of that caliber sure, it’d be a great deal, but it simply didn’t work and that’s where the risk comes into play.
There is risk in each and every contract you hand out, pre-arb or not. Repeating this point over and over again is just a big circle-jerk, and accomplishes nothing. At the end of the day, it was a solid signing when they made it.
Pretty defensive of TOR decisions,eh? All i’m saying is it was not this brilliant, witty move that you’re making it out to be. It was a make sense move that wound up failing.
And had it panned out, and Romero maintain an ERA in the 3’s for 5 years, we’d probably be hailing it as one of the greatest extensions the Jays have ever made.
EVERY deal has risk. This was a great risk to take. An AAV of $6MM is peanuts for pitching.
You seem to be so terribly focused on this one extension that went wrong. How about Jose Bautista? Edwin Encarnacion? Those names ring a bell?
HAD it panned out, sure. But it didn’t,so making it out to be a “brilliant” deal doesn’t make a ton of sense in this case. All that I’m highlighting, along with the original comment, is the fact that these deals have a level of risk and aren’t always great, this is an example to show such a deal can go south unexpectedly. Do all deals involve risk? Absolutely, nobody will argue with you there, me included. Will it stop teams from signing these types of deals? No, they’re an important part of building a team cost efficiently. Also, the reason I’m talking about this deal is because it’s the one this article about, not Joey-Bats or any other TOR player for that matter. It’s not as if i’m saying these deals are terrible and shouldn’t happen, they just aren’t always locks and don’t always wind up being steals.
There’s a risk for the player, too; if Romero had continued to pitch well, he would have been way underpaid for his prime years. It cuts both ways. Imagine if Kershaw had signed this contract after his second season.
His point is how these deals aren’t always a “steal” like everyone makes them out to be, not that the Jays did something wrong. The Cardinals have a failed extension of their own that was supposed to be team friendly, Jaime Garcia.
Every deal has risk. Not every deal will work out. Who cares? It was still a good signing when they made it.
The question the bean counters at Rogers should be asking is could Romero’s collapse been seen in advance? What are the signs a guy might flop? Both Romero & Morrow got long term deals that flopped.
And Bautista and Encarnacion got deals that have been ridiculously team-friendly. What’s your point? Like I said, nobody could have predicted Romero falling off a cliff so drastically. Even if he wasn’t the SP2 type we thought him to be, and was instead an SP4/5, his AAV of $6MM is still not too shabby.
If anybody could predict pitcher injuries in advance that person would be a billionaire.
One may not be 100% accurate but I recall some signs being there. His motion was viewed as a higher risk. His FI was clearly worse than his ERA the reverse splits. I’m sure if someone took the time they could analyze an assortment of pitchers and see which are the biggest warnings to help reduce the risk.
Sure, some mechanical issues are obvious injury risks (The “inverted W” doomed Mark Prior) but Sale and Alex Wood have terrible deliveries and have been relatively healthy so far. Romero’s issues, from what I’ve read, are that his knees were in disastrous shape; he apparently had double-reconstructive surgery – that is, reconstructive surgery on each knee simultaneously. Supposedly even standing for a long time was difficult for him even after the surgery.
I’ve always wondered why they call it the “inverted W” instead of just calling it the “M”…. Anyone have imput?
That’s funny; I wondered that too when Prior was the poster child for that motion.
True, but for entirely different reasons. Morrow’s was due to injury troubles, not collapsing off the deep end.
Rick Ankiel had injuries that forced him to “lose it”. Romero just mysteriously lost the strike zone and kept trying to pitch though whatever was bothering him.
Before I hear it, his elbow surgery he received wasn’t a major procedure. He said it himself, that the shoulder surgery wasn’t a cause of his pitching woes.
What happened was he was a reverse splits lefty who relied heavily on a change up that did not fool lefty hitters one bit . Joe Maddon figured this out and began stacking the TB lineup with lefties. Once the league followed suit it was game over for Ricky.
Oh, and Miss Universe dumped him.
Yeah, I remember thinking Miss Universe dumping him had something to do with it lol. The Reverse splits thing was interesting, he was always lit up in the minors by lefties and you probably hit it on the nail.
I would be very skeptical of players self-reporting of their injuries or recovery from them. The surgery marked the beginning of his complete collapse, so there’s a very obvious data point.
I don’t think that’s the case, Romero’s always thrown a lot of balls. He was bound to get hit around eventually which is why he was overperforming his FIP for those years.
His home run rate shot up dramatically in 2011 and his K rate dropped in 2011, which was probably the result of whatever was going on in his elbow. Glad he made plenty of money because his career is almost certainly over. A good reminder that not every player comes back from elbow injury, even if it’s not TJS. Matt Cain may be another example.
2011 was his breakout year. He didn’t get surgery until the 2012-2013 off-season. 2011 was the year that they closed the restaurant(I believe) in the Rogers Centre and everything started carrying like crazy in the dome.
Yeah, but his numbers were worrisome in 2011, which probably led to what happened later. Players hide injuries all the time, to the detriment of them and their teams
I don’t know where you are getting your facts, but Rick Ankiel lost it about a year or so before his elbow injuries. Take a look at his game logs from the postseason in 2000. He is in fact a PERFECT parallel for Romero; someone who mysteriously lost the ability to throw a strike.
I never said Ankiel didn’t have injuries that forced him to lose it. Like I said, Romero had injuries a year and half later after his supposed breakout season in which he was drastically outperforming his FIP and like someone else posted, had always struggled mightily against lefties with his circle change that didn’t fool lefties. Which is actually true now that I think about it. Even in the minors Lefties destroyed him.
Ankiel didn’t have a CY Young balloting 2000, in fact he was out of the St. Louis rotation after 6 starts in 2001. Romero pitched an entire season before he was supposedly got minor shoulder surgery in which both the Jays and Romero said was not the cause of Romero’s bad season. Also a 3.3WAR vs a 6.3WAR season aren’t very comparable.
If you want to go in-depth. In Romero’s starts his team was 11-4 until his June 27th start for the 2012 season and teams were batting an average .232/.330/.399/.729.
I don’t think you’re understanding me… Rick Ankiel DIDN’T lose his ability to pitch because of an injury… It was in fact in that 2000 postseason with the Cardinals that Ankiel mysteriously lost the ability to throw a strike, managing to throw FIVE wild pitches in a single inning.
That is why I continue to bring him up as a parallel for Romero, who also lost his command of the strike zone sans-injury.
He ended up getting Tommy John Surgery a few years later, no?
By the way Romero still got out RHB’s after 2011, like someone already said, he’s got dramatic splits in his career vs LHB’s for some bizarre reason.
Also, nice job editing your post to cover up for the fact that you said Ankiel’s injuries derailed him. You never brought up his postseason ability to throw strikes.
You don’t keep star players in the fold by signing extensions because they will remain in the fold because they are arbitration-eligible. Yes you might get one extra free agent year for a star player, but you could also get stuck with paying $30 million to a guy that you would have non-tendered three years earlier. These are major gambles for unknown quantities.
While pre-arb guys obviously stay in the fold regardless of extension, an extension can keep them around longer, and cheaper. It also builds up invaluable goodwill for future contract negotiations to keep players in the fold even longer past the original extension, as it forgoes the painful arb process, showing confidence in the player’s ability.
Moreover, like I’ll keep on saying, an AAV of $6MM is NOT a “major gamble”, especially for a potential SP2 type. $6MM isn’t even that bad for an SP4. Nobody could have foreseen Romero’s epic nosedive.
The painful arb process? Painful for whom? I still don’t get your argument on how it is helpful to the club to sign a guy for his estimated max arb value. Yes it’s great if the guy exceeds expectations. But in the more likely event that he fails to live up to expectations, then you have dead money. Romero’s epic nosedive might not have been foreseen, but the possibility of it happening could have been planned for. All throughout time there have been players that were great in their 2nd and 3rd year that tailed off dramatically by their 6th year through either injury or the league figuring them out. It will happen again many times, but these extensions fail to account for that or more accurately pretend that they do not happen. It’s not my money, so I don’t really care that much, but if it were my money, I would never give a pre-arb extension.
Was still rooting for this guy. He was a pretty good pitcher for a while. Truthfully he kinda sounds like a reclamation project the pirates may be interested in.
One year of good pitching, one year mediocre at best. He was a flash in the pan and has nothing left. I saw his stuff all last year in AAA Buffalo. Dude simply cant pitch at any level.
He was actually an above average major-league pitcher for 3 seasons. Two of those seasons were very good. Then he got hurt; very typical story for a pitcher. Anybody remember Noah Lowry?
I remember him. For a few years I would check up on him before my fantasy draft to see where he was at pitching wise. He had some flashes where he showed great potential
He (Lowry) apparently sued the Giants because he felt they misdiagnosed his injuries; I don’t know how that was resolved.
Welcome to the Dodgers.
Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, maybe..at a huge stretch.
He could come back like Scott Kazmir.
Reminds me of Tommy Hanson’s career path.
Fantastic comparison. Back in 2010, Hanson and Romero looked like dudes who were going to have very long, successful careers.
So glad the Braves got walden for Hanson. That’s a boras client that isn’t glad he waited for free agency. Good comp
Now Walden is flinging and looking good for the Cards.
Miller looks good and so does tyrell in Gwinnett.
Shelby miller is looking good and so does tyrell in AAA
Shelby miller looks good and so does tyrell in AAA
Great comp; Hanson is a perfect example of why teams shouldn’t increase innings for pitchers dramatically from one season to the next (the Verducci effect). Hanson went from 127 IP to 202, then broke and never pitched well again, basically. With Romero, who had bad control to begin with, the innings increase wasn’t quite as extreme, although he pitched a lot of innings at a young age, but it appears as though he tried to pitch through injury in 2011/12 and that wrecked him for good. Apparently he’s had reconstructive surgery on both knees and they’re in bad shape still. That would probably hamper any pitcher.
I’m one of the few I know who never was really comfortable watching him pitch. Not sure what it was. With Halladay or elite pitchers you have a general level of comfortability but even during Romero’s best season, I was always nervous watching him pitch. Guess I had reason to be.
he reminded me of b.j. ryan’s pitching, perpetually uneasy
what a disappointment, goes from cy young contender to this. he was just so awful these last couple years
I remember a few years back when it was actually a discussion if they made the right choice picking Ricky over Tulowitzki. Not even close
Some people close to him theorize that he let fans on social media get into his head. He’s the type of person that responds to every troll on Twitter.
Braves could use a lefty. Maybe he can be a project for them
He hasn’t been able to pitch serviceably for years, and for his career lefties are OPS’ing .862, which includes when he was actually good. He’s got major reverse splits in part because his out pitch was a change up. He’s only really useful as a starter or long reliever.
He might still have loogy potential
Gotta feel for the guy (money aside). Had everyone rooting for him, kept trying and training hard by all accounts, kept his chin up, but in the end the Jays had to tell him they’d given up and would rather have someone else in their AAA rotation. Don’t know if it’s the yips or what, but everything fell apart just when it looked like it was all coming together. This one had to hurt for Anthopoulos.
Hope Ricky lands on his feet someone and at least proves he can make it back to the Show.
It sounds like his knees just gave out, basically. There’s a great story in the Toronto paper from this spring training about him and his “shredded” knees.
Former 1st round pick Dan Duquette will pick him up .
Sounds like a future Pirate with a sub 3.5 ERA followed by a big contract with another team.