Veteran right-hander Sergio Romo went unclaimed on waivers following his recent DFA and has elected free agency, tweets Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet. The Blue Jays had designated Romo for assignment this past weekend.
Romo’s time with the Jays proved to be brief. Signed to a big league deal after being designated for assignment and released by the Mariners, he appeared in six games with Toronto and allowed a pair of earned runs on one hit and two walks with three strikeouts in 3 2/3 innings. That lone hit was a home run, continuing an alarming spike in home-run rate that dates back to his time in Seattle earlier this season.
The 39-year-old Romo signed a one-year, $2MM deal with the Mariners late in the offseason, after Seattle found out that right-hander Casey Sadler would miss the season due to shoulder surgery. He didn’t find his footing in either locale this year, however, evidenced by a 7.50 ERA and whopping seven long balls in just 18 innings of work.
Romo isn’t far removed from a solid 2019-20 run with the Marlins and Twins, when he pitched to a combined 3.59 ERA with a 24.7% strikeout rate and a 7.1% walk rate. However, his strikeout rate dipped a bit last season during a pedestrian year with the A’s, and he’s whiffed a career-worst 17.7% of his opponents so far in 2022. Romo has been a soft-tosser for his whole career and had success averaging just 86.5 mph on his “fastball” from 2016-20, but this season’s 85.2 mph average, like his strikeout rate, is a career-low.
I THOUGHT HE WAS IN AAA????
AA? Wow. Rude. Not supposed to reveal that kinda stuff
Triple A baseball genius
I’m abstaining from commenting on the daily Sergio Romo rumors, at least today…oh wait, I mean Soto.
Forever Giant, Sergio Romo
3 time World Series champion.
Saved game 4 of the 2012 W S against the Detroit Tigers.
He did! Struck out Miggy looking to get the final out! Great career. He can watch the sun set with a smile on his face.
He’s had a good career. I believe I watched him start a game with Tampa. Lol. The ship has sailed- his time to retire.
Mets should take a flyer on him
Flyer is right. Balls will be flying over the fence and out of the park.
Romo is a sweet, funny guy, but he’s toast as an effective MLB pitcher:
I agree that they should take a chance on him, he can’t be any worse than what they have right now
Unfortunately, I think his career in the bigs should be coming to an end. Or at least maybe see if the giants could use him for very far and between appearances our the pen. Solid career either way
Thank god!
Maybe I’m missing something here, but it seems to me Romo’s time in Toronto wasn’t as bad as depicted in these comments. His WHIP was only 0.818, his ERA was 4.91, and several of his appearances were scoreless against him. According to his MLB game log the damage was done in only 1 of his 6 appearances. He was far from lights out, but he wasn’t abysmal either. One bad outing and the Jays gave up on him. I didn’t realize the Jays had such a plethora of solid relievers that they could give up on Romo so fast.
I don’t get it either.
Can confirm. He was decent. Not a killer, but the Jays bullpen is a hot mess, and he did well.
His fb was 84.5mph, his ‘stuff’ wasnt great.. Brad Hand cost Toronto many games last year, cant afford a repeat with this year’s worse record.
Romo has a unique pitch, the “no dot slider.” The writers in this site never mention it. Maybe because it functionally defies analytics.
Hitters have a hard time with the mental adjustment to a slider without the usual spin. Their brains usually read fastball. Then the pitch breaks. That is how he had lasted so long in MLB without dominating stuff.