Cubs Free Agent Target: Jordan Romano |
When the Cubs bullpen struggled last season, Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins were creative in trying to get things right. They made a trade for Tyson Miller early in the season, which worked in their favor, and from all accounts, he is expected to be back this season.
You also saw the Cubs trade for Nate Pearson later in the season, sign Jorge Lopez as a free agent, and call up Porter Hodge, who emerged as the team's closer last season. When it comes to Lopez and Pearson, not only were both of them very good with the Cubs, downright dominant at times, but both were seen as reclamation projects that Hoyer loves to get his hands on. For the most part, every reclamation project that Hoyer has worked on has worked in his favor, and that is a big reason why he continues to operate like that when it comes to finding free agent help for the pen. While that can work in the short term, you can't count on that long term, which is a reason why the Cubs pen struggled as much as it did last season in the first half of the year. However, you can't expect Hoyer to completely steer clear of the course he has built, as you know he will take a swing at a reclamation project in hopes of finding gold. This year's version of that could be former Toronto Blue Jays closer Jordan Romano, who missed most of 2024 with an injury and is now a free agent. Romano has been a part of the Blue Jays pen since 2019, but it has been in the past three years that he has emerged as one of the better late-game relievers in the game. You wouldn't have guessed that based on last season, as Romano pitched in 15 games and posted a 6.59 ERA before missing the rest of the season with an injury. He still registered eight saves and showed good command, but his velocity was down, and he was getting hit much harder than he was accustomed to before the injury. While many fans would be skeptical of bringing in a guy like Romano coming off an injury and the overall season he had, most GMs aren't going to hold that against him, as his body of work leading into last season was impressive. Take the 2023 season, for example, when Romano pitched in 59 games and posted a 2.90 ERA. He locked down 36 saves that season, walking 24 and striking out 72. His best season was in 2022, and that was when Romano put himself on the map as one of the better-rising closers in the game. He registered 36 saves in that season, but he also appeared in a career-best 63 games, posting an impressive 2.11 ERA. That followed a season where he posted a 7-1 record in 62 games and posted a 2.14 ERA with 26 saves as he took over the Closer role early on in the 2021 season. Before that three-year run, Romano bounced between AAA and the majors, as he saw just 32 combined games in 2019 and 2020 before cementing himself as a lockdown late-inning reliever. Heading into this season, Romano has seen action in 231 games and has posted a 2.90 ERA in those games with 105 career saves. Although no one knows how Romano will bounce back from his injury or when he will return to the mound, he has shown several times the type of reliever he can be. That alone is worth the risk of bringing him in, as the Cubs could get very creative with his contract. Given that he is still only 31 years old, you would like to think he has some baseball left in him, injury or not. Why not use that to your advantage and sign him to a two-year deal worth 16-20 million? The Cubs could essentially make the second year an option year worth 15 million and use the first year of the deal as a one-year, $5 million flyer deal. That alone would help the Cubs as well as Romano. Should Romano prove he is healthy enough to get back on the mound next season, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the Cubs would pick up that second-year option, giving the right-hander an additional year to prove himself. If his first year in Chicago were to go poorly or he was unable to pitch at all, it would allow the Cubs to move on from him without having to pay him for any future services. This may be one of the riskier moves of the offseason, but it could come with endless rewards. Romano is a stud in the late innings when he is right, and having reliable late-inning arms was an issue for this team. It will be interesting to see how the Cubs and other teams view him this offseason, especially considering how good he was for a three-year run.
