Better Know Your Blue Jays 40-Man: Jordan Romano

Jordan Romano turns 31 in April. He’s pitched in the majors for five seasons now, the last three as our closer. He was a 10th-round draft pick in 2014. Not surprisingly, he’s easily the best player to come out of that round that year (former Jay Matt Gage would be second best). I’m sure you all know he’s from Markham, Ontario.

The sad part is we lost him in the Rule 5 draft to the White Sox, who sold him to the Rangers, but thankfully they returned him.

He has 97 saves, putting him at #5 on our all-time list. His 8th save this season will put him in the #3 spot. 25 more will put him number 2, between Tom Henke and Duane Ward. Henke is still a ways away from 217. His 216 games put him 24th in team history. He needs 115 more games to get into the top 10. He has some time to move up the lists. He’s not a free agent until 2026.

2023 was a bit of a down year for Jordan (by his standards). He had his highest ERA since his 17-game 2019 season, but 2.90 is still a pretty decent ERA. He had 36 saves (tying his career high) with just 4 blown saves for a 90% success rate.

Romano had some trouble in non-save situations, with a 4.17 ERA, but that was only 17.1 innings. A couple of bad outings hurt that. the ERA. He was amazing in 9 extra innings, holding batters to a .037/.188/.148 (very small sample). He didn’t give up his first hit (and first run) in extras until September, which is pretty amazing, considering they start the inning with a runner on second.

And he was great coming in with runners on base, allowing just 2 of 18 inherited runners to score.

Batters hit .218/.301/.350 against him after hitting .190/.268/.263 in 2022.

Jordan is a basic two-pitch reliever. He throws a four-seam fastball (averaging 96.8 mph) and a slider (86.9 mph). He has never thrown any other pitch in the major leagues.

What will he do this year?

PECOTA: 52 games, 37 saves, 55.3 innings, with a 4.09 ERA. I don’t believe he’ll average more than an inning an outing, nor will he have an ERA north of 4.

ZiPS: 59 games, 32 saves, 58.2 innings, with a 3.37 ERA.

Steamer: 66 games, 32 saves, 66 innings, 3.65 ERA.