How Jordan Romano evolved from minor-league starter into dominant closer

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BRONX, N.Y. — The reports on Jordan Romano as he was coming up through the Toronto Blue Jays farm system were all the same.

Lively fastball, really good breaking ball, but his stuff waned the longer the outing went and he could never quite develop his changeup enough to give him a viable third pitch.

Everything was pointing towards a future in the bullpen, and it’s even something Romano himself quietly preferred after he spent his lone season at Oral Roberts University closing out games in 2014.

“Honestly, I wanted to be in the ‘pen for the last couple of years I was in the minor leagues,” Romano recalled Tuesday afternoon inside the Blue Jays clubhouse at Yankee Stadium. “I liked starting and stuff, but I was a closer in college and I kind of just liked it a bit better. I kind of just wanted to be in the ‘pen because I thought that’s what suited me best.”

There were many in the organization who agreed, but Romano spent the 2016, 2017 and 2018 seasons working his way up the ladder in the rotation, starting 66 games across those three campaigns and reaching Triple-A.

“I remember him kind of being inconsistent as a starter, but the talk about him was always about his power, his fastball, and his plus breaking ball,” Jays pitching coach Pete Walker said. “We always knew he had those two effective pitches but, I think, the organization was really trying hard to keep him in a starter role and working on that changeup was a focal point for such a long time.

“It came to the point where it just really wasn’t working.”

Romano still pitched well enough that the Texas Rangers decided to take a chance on the right-hander in the Rule 5 draft in December of 2018, but he couldn’t claim the long-man bullpen job he was