The Giants have signed right-hander Tommy Romero to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. The Beverly Hills Sports Council client has been assigned to Triple-A Sacramento but could perhaps receive an invite to big league Spring Training.
Romero, 26, is not too far removed from being a notable prospect in the Rays system. In 2021, he tossed 110 1/3 innings between Double-A and Triple-A, with a combined 2.61 earned run average that year. He paired a 33.3% strikeout rate with a 7.1% walk rate. The Rays added him to their 40-man roster that November to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft and Baseball America ranked him the #21 prospect in the organization going into 2022.
He was able to make his MLB debut in 2022, logging 8 1/3 innings over four appearances. He allowed 10 earned runs in that time, walking nine while striking out seven. He was claimed off waivers by the Nationals in August and one of those four appearances was with the Nats. He spent the rest of the year in Triple-A, between those two orgs, with a 3.24 ERA in 86 innings. His peripherals backed up a bit, with his strikeout rate falling to 20.2% and his walk rate ticking up to 9.6%.
The Nats non-tendered Romero at the end of 2022 and re-signed him to a minor league deal for 2023. He tossed 87 2/3 innings over 10 starts and 26 relief appearances last year with a 5.44 ERA. His 20.4% strikeout rate was somewhat similar to the year before but he gave out free passes at a huge 15.2% clip.
It obviously wasn’t his strongest season but he is still fairly young and was a well-regarded prospect in the recent past. For the Giants, there’s no risk in signing him to a minor league deal to get an up-close look at him. He has worked both as a starter and a reliever in his career and the Giants have shown a strong willingness to abandon the distinction between those two jobs. Logan Webb, Alex Cobb and Kyle Harrison were the only hurlers on the club to be used exclusively in the rotation last year, as guys like Sean Manaea, Anthony DeSclafani, Alex Wood, Ross Stripling, Jakob Junis and others were moved back and forth between starting and relieving.
Manaea and DeSclafani are now on different clubs while Wood and Junis are free agents and Cobb is set to begin the year on the injured list due to hip surgery. Robbie Ray was recently acquired from the Mariners but is still recovering from last year’s Tommy John surgery and will also start the season on the IL. There’s little certainty in the Opening Day rotation beyond Webb. Stripling is still there but coming off a poor season. Harrison is still lacking in experience, as are guys like Tristan Beck and Keaton Winn. The club is going to give reliever Jordan Hicks a chance to start but it’s unclear if that will yield positive results. The bullpen has a solid foursome with Camilo Doval, Luke Jackson and the Rogers brothers but no one else with even one year of major league service time.
The club could still bolster that mix between now and Opening Day but there could be a path to logging some innings for depth guys. If Romero makes it onto the roster at any point this season, he has a couple of option years, allowing him to potentially provide the club with some roster flexibility.
Yay team!
Take that Dodgers!
No risk. Could be worthy bullpen arm
You just did an entire write up about the Giants off season targets and never even mentioned this guy, that’s just poor journalism
Better than Murdock though
It happened after the “season targets” piece. It is not “poor journalism.”
There it is, their Big Move, that they promissed everyone before the FA Start !! Sigh
This comment is good to copy and paste on any post involving a minor league pickup. For any team that isn’t the Doyers.
The only thing they promised was to be aggressive, and they delivered on that promise. Framing this as their big move is completely disingenuous, since it’s clearly a lesser move than signing Lee, trading for Ray, and signing Hicks, which is more than most reams have done.
Farhan loves the smell of a good dumpster and just can’t help himself. It isn’t only in his professional life either he won the Dollar Store shopper of the year for the 5th year in a row recently and has a season pass to Goodwill. His daughter tried to throw out a half eaten ham sandwich the other day and he scooped it out of the trash and had a late snack instead of wasting money on dinner. He purchased one of those body suits from the movie Dune that recycles sweat and urine for consumption to save on his water bill and always uses both sides of toilet paper. Cockroaches have shrines for him and Raccoons worship him. He recently had to have back surgery due to bending over too frequently to turn over every stone he has ever come across in his lifetime.
Forgot about the other night on Jeopardy they had a question asking about which army Farhan had previously been a General in. Answer was “What is the Salvation Army?”
Well done, Frugal. 5 stars for the creativity and time that went into crafting that comment.
Yeah, like every other team in MLB isn’t doing the same type of deals.
Target acquired
*snore*
Yawn
fart
Anyone who’s major league career is 7 home runs allowed in 8-1/3 innings has nowhere to go but up.
Or away?
What’s insane is anyone making any kind of analysis based on 8 1/3 innings.
And why aren’t the twins in on some of these guys, being as we desperately need pitching if we hope to contend even in our weak division?
Giants have found the answer to Juliet’s question.
ROMERO, ROMERO, WHERE FORE ART THOUGH, ROMERO??
He’s now livin’ by the bay is San Francisco,
San Francisco, GI-ANTS !!
Gi-aints!
Farhan thrift shopping again, what a waste of expiring contracts off-season
Again, every team in MLB is making these kinds of deals. Why is Zaidi singled out for doing what every other team is doing?
Go River Cats!
Zaidi is the best! No one does a better job of loading up Sacramento with scraps from other teams.
What an embarrassment this org has become. Tough times for Giants fans
SFGLifer, So tell me; how did you feel mid-August of last season when the Giants were 7 games over .500, only 10 games back of the Dodgers, 2.5 ahead of the D’backs, with a 1.5 game lead on a WC spot? Was it embarrassing to be a Giants’ fan then?