Leap of faith

On his way up to double-A New Hampshire from single-A Dunedin back in June 2008, J.P. Arencibia looked over the Fisher Cats roster, spotted Ricky Romero’s name on it, and began to scratch his head.

The catcher and the left-handed pitcher, both first-round draft picks, had crossed paths in the past and Arencibia couldn’t believe Romero wasn’t further up the system.

Romero’s 2-3 record and 6.48 earned-run average made even less sense. "His (stuff) is too good," Arencibia remembers thinking.

So Arencibia called his agent, Nez Balelo, and asked for some background. Balelo had worked at Romero’s agency when the Toronto Blue Jays used the sixth overall pick in 2005 to draft him out of Cal State Fullerton, and he told Arencibia that things had changed.

"He said, ‘I think he’s become passive. In college, he was the guy everyone hated to face, he was cocky, he’d go after guys, he would challenge guys. That’s the only difference. Now, he’s just passive,’" recalls Arencibia. "And when I got (to New Hampshire) I saw that.

"We sat down and I said, ‘Listen, this is what I was told, we’re going to throw fastballs in on everybody and you’re going to see. You’re too good to be getting hit the way you’re getting hit.’ I’m not taking any credit at all, but from then on he’s turned it up."

That Romero did, and as the Blue Jays search for ways forward this winter after another season over too early, he is one of the club’s key support beams for the future.

The 26-year-old emerged as a legitimate ace during a brilliant 2011 – sixth in ERA at 2.92, sixth in batting average against at .216, eighth in innings with 225, 10th in wins with 15, 12th in strikeouts with 178 – and is the lone stable element in a starting rotation still going through growing pains.

Brandon Morrow, Brett Cecil and Kyle Drabek, among others, are to varying degrees still trying to find ways to bring all their talents together, to make their talents click. In many ways, any progress the Blue Jays hope to make in 2012 is dependent on each of them taking a step forward in their development since, as general manager Alex Anthopoulos puts it, "other than Romero, everyone else in the rotation can stand to improve, or are capable of doing more, and that’s the hope."

Advice on how to leverage one’s talent is easy to come by in baseball, but words that leave an impact and stick are not. And sometimes the messenger can be as important as the message.

Blue Jays bullpen coach Pat Hentgen thinks back to a conversation in the outfield he had in 1993 with catcher Pat Borders that helped propel him to a breakout 19-9 season.

"He told me that my fastball command was as good as anybody we had and I remember thinking, ‘No way, really? Are you serious?’" says Hentgen. "So it took a little bit of a push for my own self-confidence from our catcher. At that point in my career, I had a couple of years in the big-leagues, and when he told me that I thought, ‘Maybe he’s right. If it is, it is.’"

The message that made a difference for Romero came back in that summer of 2008, at the tail end of a two-year stretch in double-A he describes as the low point of his career. Arencibia told him exactly what he needed to hear.

"When J.P. came up to double-A, we would talk and he would say, ‘How the hell are you still in double-A? Do you realize what your stuff is?’" remembers Romero. "Pitching coaches would tell me you don’t belong here, but until the day you figure it out, it doesn’t help.

"At first it was like these guys are just saying that because I have a 5.00 ERA and they’re trying to make me feel good. But I think J.P. saw something, all my coaches saw something, all my teammates saw something and it was just a matter of me believing it."

Romero turned the corner during his final eight starts at double-A, going 3-1 with a 2.79 ERA before earning a promotion to triple-A Syracuse, where he went 3-3 with a 3.78 ERA in seven outings to close out the season.

The next spring he broke camp with the Blue Jays, and save for three rehab outings in 2009, hasn’t been back to the minors since.

"The whole double-A experience, I was always doubting whether I was going to make it or not," says Romero. "When you’re getting your butt kicked and you look at your numbers and you have a 6.00 ERA, a 4.00 ERA, a 5.00 ERA, at times you’re like, ‘Whoa.’ At the same time, the frame of mind I had was this was just going to make me better for longer and it did.

"I was coming out of college, high draft pick and a lot of expectations, and I had never really failed and I think I needed that. I’m so glad, I’m so thankful that I failed in double-A, because it made me the pitcher I am today."

The Blue Jays can only hope the rest of the rotation is saying something similar about their 2011 struggles in 2012.

Shi Davidi is the MLB Insider for sportsnet.ca. Come back to read his insight and opinion regularly.