I appreciate seeing an asset that maybe was on the buy low side of things and thinking that maybe – just maybe – something could be done to get a player on the cheap(ish).
49 G, 42 2/3 IP, 8.23 ERA (5.39 FIP), 25.1 K%, 9.1 BB%, 2.11 HR/9, -0.4 fWAR
Again, I appreciate the team seeing Romano as a possible asset to their bullpen. Pitching coach Caleb Cotham has been successful in helping pitchers improve while at the big league level. He and his associates in the pitching development portion of the organization likely saw something that they could fix with Romano and encouraged the team to roll the dice.
“Backfired” is probably not strong enough a word to describe what happened with his season.
There is no way to sugarcoat how bad he actually was. Were there stretches of effectiveness? Sure. There were five games in May where he allowed one baserunner and struck out ten. There was another stretch of five games in June where he allowed three baserunners and struck out five. Other than those flashes, he truly was terrible.
The thing is, they could have really used him. One of the team’s issues this past season was their lack of competent right handed middle relievers. It’s why they were forced into signing and depending on David Robertson late in the season. Having a better right handed reliever would have allowed Rob Thomson to employ better platoon advantages in games that the team could have won. It was a failure of the front office to go with the dumpster diving at that position in the first place and that failure ended up coming back to hurt them.
The future with the Phillies
There looks like there will always be room in the team’s budget for a signing like this: veteran reliever on a one-year deal that has flashed talent before. Maybe he was even a closer!
It worked once with David Robertson.
It didn’t work with Romano.
Maybe that’s why the draft strategy of picking lots of future relievers and fringe starting pitchers early in that draft was brought to bear. Regardless, let’s hope they don’t have ideas of thinking “I can fix him still!” with Romano, that they bring that chapter to close.