Seek Relief: Jordan Romano

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Seek Relief, a series geared towards relief pitchers who seemingly cannot catch a break.  Our first subject: Jordan Romano. 

I was inspired to write about Romano after watching him come in the game in relief of Ranger Suarez in Monday night’s game (8/18).  He came in after Suarez gave up a solo homer to Mitch Garver and then hit Dominic Canzone with a pitch.  The Phillies still had a 7-1 lead in the top of the 7th with Romano coming on in relief.  There were already two outs.  With a runner on first, Romano’s outing went like this: J.P Crawford single, Cole Young 3-run home run, and finally a Randy Arozarena groundout to end the inning.

The inning was over, and Romano exited the game with this statline: 0.1 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, on 10 pitches (5 balls, 5 strikes).  He got rocked, quickly.

Jordan Romano is a 6’5”, 32 year old reliever from Canada.  He was drafted by the Blue Jays in the 10th round of the 2014 draft, where he spent all of his career, up until he was signed by the Phillies this past offseason. 

He’s a two-pitch pitcher - slider at 85.9 MPH average used 63% of the time, and 4-seam fastball at 95.5 MPH used 36% of the time (via Baseball Savant).  Romano is a two-time All-Star (‘22 and ‘23) and had 36 Saves in each of those seasons.  He only pitched in 13.2 innings in 2024, starting out the season on the IL with right elbow inflammation.  He was then shut down at the end of May and underwent arthroscopic surgery on his elbow.

Fully healthy in 2025, with a fresh start in the Phillies’ bullpen, Romano was poised for a bounce-back year.  But it hasn’t gone so smoothly.  In his first appearance with the Phillies, he blew a save.  He threw one inning, faced six batters, gave up two runs on two hits, walked one, struck out one, and threw 29 pitches total.  It hasn’t gotten much better from there.  As of 8/19, his numbers for 2025 are as follows:

2 Wins, 4 Losses, 7 Holds, 8 Saves, 3 Blown Saves

41.2 IP, 43 hits, 36 runs (35 earned), 9 HRs, 16 BBs, 45 Ks 

7.56 ERA

Yikes.  So, what can we do here?  How can we understand what’s going wrong? The best place to start is to look at the numbers.  As I looked at Baseball Reference’s game logs for 2025, I noticed a trend.  As a relief pitcher, you need to be ready to go when your name is called, no matter how much (or how little) rest you have.  But what’s curious about Romano, is that he has a sharp line separating his effectiveness that coincides with days of rest.  Let’s break it down:

0-2 days of rest:

30 appearances

24.1 IP

33 hits

28 runs

7 homers

13 BBs/32 Ks

10.36 ERA

3+ days of rest:

18 appearances

16.1 IP

10 hits

8 runs

2 homers

3 BBs/13Ks

4.00 ERA

Alright so there’s a change, but it’s still not good.  You still want your relief pitchers giving up less runs.  But what if there are outliers in the data? 

On 0-2 days of rest, Romano gave up at least 1 run in 12 out of 30 appearances (that’s 40% of the time!).  But on 3+ days of rest, Romano gave up at least 1 run in only 2 of 18 appearances (that’s 10% of the time).  Still not perfect, but that’s far less often.  

Yet, the ERA is still at a 4.00 on 3+ days rest…why?

Let’s go to April 19th, 2025.  Phillies at home versus the Marlins.  Jordan Romano entered the game in the top of the 9th with an 11-4 lead at home.  Here’s the sequence of events:

Jesus Sanchez double

Eric Wagaman single

Dane Myers 3-run home run

Matt Mervis ground out

Javier Sanoja single

Connor Norby out on fielder’s choice

Graham Pauley RBI double

Liam Hicks 2-run home run

Romano was then pulled with one more out remaining, which Jose Alvarado got immediately after, and sealed the Phillies’ victory 11-10.  Romano’s line: 0.2 IP, 6 hits, 6 ERs, 2 homers.  For a relief pitcher, this balloons your numbers.  Any pitcher will tell you that there are certain days where you just don’t have it. 4/19/2025 was one of those days for Romano. So, let’s revisit his stats on 3+ days rest and take out this single appearance:

Above stats again for reference:

3+ days of rest:

18 appearances

16.1 IP

10 hits

8 runs

2 homers

3 BBs/13Ks

4.00 ERA

3+ days of rest (minus the 4/19/2025 outlier)

17 appearances

15.2 IP

4 hits

2 runs

0 homers

3 BBs/13Ks

1.18 ERA

Now that’s more like it.  It’s simple, right?  

Don’t pitch Jordan Romano on less than 3 days' rest or be prepared for a 40% chance he’s going to give up at least a run.  

So, what changed?  Is it fatigue?  Is it age?  Could the surgery that ended his season early last year still be affecting his recovery?  His arm angle slot hasn’t changed, but his slider usage is much higher this year than in years past.  In his two All-Star seasons, he was nearly 50/50 on his fastball/slider usage.  Now he’s 63/36 slider/fastball.  It should be noted that he has lost 1 MPH on his fastball since the surgery, but does that account for such a drastic increase in slider usage?

I’d like to know your thoughts on this.