Two months after declining his $4.5MM option for 2011, the Phillies have re-signed lefty J.C. Romero according to the team. The one-year deal will pay the reliever $1.35MM plus performance bonuses. He is represented by Praver/Shapiro.
Romero, 34, has battled elbow and forearm issues over the last two seasons, hampering his already shaky control. He's thrown just 53.1 innings since the start of the 2009 campaign, walking more batters (42) than he's struck out (40). Romero is still effective against left-handed batters however, holding them to a .174/.278/.251 batting line over the last three seasons.
Philadelphia had a one-year, $1.1MM deal in place with southpaw Dennys Reyes earlier this month, but it fell apart because the team's medical staff didn't like what they found in his physical according to Randy Miller of The Bucks County Courier Times. That left the club in need of a left-handed reliever. Romero has been with the Phillies since the middle of the 2007 season, when they signed him as a free agent after the Red Sox cut him loose.
Leslie Gudel of CSNPhilly.com first reported the agreement.
Not a bad deal for Romero. Would still be nice to add another lefty though.
we need a javy lopez kinda guy , the giants traded a cup of coffee and some scrapple and that guy is dominant against anybody batting from the left hand side of the batters box.
mmmmm, scrapple!!!
Joe Beimel still there
i think what 989 was trying to say was a good lefty
Very good deal. I think Romero could have gotten more, but he wanted to return to the Phillies and lobbied to be signed after the Reyes deal fell through.
If he could have gotten more, he would have taken it. This was it for him I think.
Now hopefully Chad Durbin takes a pay cut as well and that makes us have a good bullpen becuz of the fearsome foursome. You only need so many arms with 4 legit aces in the rotation.
Durbin at a discount wouldn’t be the worst move in the world. But seriously, Durbin for $1M, Romero for $1M, Contreras for $2.5M, Baez for $2.5M, and the biggest punch in the gut, Kendrick for probably $2M through arbitration. Add that up, and we’re talking about real money that could have been spend on guys like Fuentes or Balfour, and the rest could have been filled in with rooks with this starting rotation.
I don’t hate any of the guys we have, but I would rather have one solid LH arm to go with Madson and Lidge instead of a collection of guys who are just OK.
get joe beimel!!