ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The thing that’s hardest to accept about the stunning disintegration of Ricky Romero’s career with the Toronto Blue Jays is how mysterious the drop-off remains, how even two-plus years after things went south in 2012 there are no answers to be found.
Flash-in-the-pan all-stars that quickly fade into obscurity happen, but the 30-year-old left-hander, who was released Saturday by general manager Alex Anthopoulos, doesn’t fit that mould.
Romero improved in three consecutive big-league seasons, culminating in his 2011 all-star campaign, was strong and durable, cared about winning, cared about his teammates and worked relentlessly, especially once he signed his $30.1-million, five-year contract extension.
If you were looking for candidates to collapse so thoroughly, he would never have been a consideration.
Yet something turned, thus far irreparably, in June of 2012, after Romero improved to 8-1 with a 4.34 ERA in 15 starts. On June 27, the Boston Red Sox rocked him for nine runs, eight earned, over three innings, the first of 13 consecutive losses in 15 outings.
He grinded to the end, won just once more after that, and finished the season with a 5.77 ERA and 1.674 WHIP. Though Romero’s knees ached, he continued to take the ball for a rotation decimated by injuries to Brandon Morrow, Drew Hutchison and Kyle Drabek, a pillar of stability if not performance.
The slide continued in the spring of 2013, he was optioned to single-A Dunedin to rebuild his delivery, but ultimately there was no recovery. Romero pitched in just four more games with the Blue Jays, all that year, and hasn’t been a factor since, undergoing surgery on both his knees last year.
That hasn’t been the answer, so far at least.
"His recovery, his rehab is just going very slow at this point," Anthopoulos said after breaking the news to Romero, having watched him throw a live batting practice session Saturday.
"We made the determination, we just didn’t think that by the end of the year he was going to be able to factor for us up here. Knowing this was the last year of his contract, felt it was best to just give him the opportunity to give him a head start somewhere else."
There’s no financial relief in this move for the Blue Jays, who gave Romero the balance of his $7.5 million salary this year plus paid out the $600,000 buyout on his $13.1-million option for next year.
They could have waited things out, seen if time made a difference and perhaps he could have offered something later in the year, but they decided enough was enough.
"It was the right thing to do by him," said Anthopoulos, rather than "have him continue to come in, in Florida, have him get treatment on his knees, build up arm strength, to do all that, when we’ve, internally, made the determination that we don’t see it’s going to come in time. …
"He’s worked tremendously hard," he added. "We have nothing but the highest praise for the way he’s gone about it."
In releasing him now, the Blue Jays allow Romero to seek out a fresh start with another club should he want that, the belief is that he does, while freeing up their coaches to lock in on other players.
The time has come for everyone to turn the page.
Still, that does little to ease the sting of his release, even if the writing has been on the wall for a long, long time. Romero is one of the good guys, a deserving face of the franchise type, and how different the team’s fortunes in recent years might have been had he remained in form.
Whether Romero’s issues are physical or mental is no longer something the Blue Jays must resolve.
"Obviously, no one wanted to see what happened to him and it’s still, to this day, I mentioned this to him as well, I don’t think anybody has an explanation," said Anthopoulos. "Close to 230 innings, ground balls, strikeouts, all-star, got better three years in a row, even the first year of his contract, he’d already signed it, he was an all-star. That was his best year."
All of which makes it incomprehensible that his Blue Jays career ends like this.