{"id":313660,"date":"2025-11-25T23:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/313660\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T23:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:21:08","slug":"cardinals-jojo-romero-generating-trade-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/313660\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals’ JoJo Romero Generating Trade Interest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cardinals moved the first of what\u2019ll surely be several veterans earlier today when they traded right-hander Sonny Gray<\/a> (and $20MM) to the Red Sox<\/a> for a pair of younger pitchers and a player to be named later (or cash). There\u2019s no telling right now the order in which their offseason dominos will fall, but Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat reports<\/a> that left-handed reliever JoJo Romero<\/a> has been drawing trade interest throughout the first few weeks of the offseason.<\/p>\n

Romero is about as straightforward as trade candidates get. He\u2019s a productive, affordable reliever on a rebuilding club who\u2019ll be a free agent this time next year. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects<\/a> a $4.4MM salary in 2026, which is Romero\u2019s final season of club control.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old Romero came to the St. Louis from Philadelphia in 2022 and established himself as a staple in the Cardinals\u2019 bullpen beginning in 2023. Over the past three years, he\u2019s worked 156 2\/3 frames with a 2.93 ERA and roughly average strikeout and walk rates (22.9 K%, 8.5 BB%). He sat 93.7 mph with his sinker this past season and kept 53% of his opponents\u2019 batted balls on the ground en route to a sparkling 2.07 ERA.<\/p>\n

Romero has been one of the Cardinals\u2019 top leverage relievers, evidenced by a dozen saves and 57 holds across the past three seasons. He also posted career-best numbers against righties in 2025, limiting them to just a .220\/.327\/.315 batting line.<\/p>\n

[Related: Top 40 Trade Candidates of the 2025-26 MLB Offseason<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The Cardinals\u2019 case for trading Romero is bolstered by a generally weak class of left-handed relievers<\/a> on the free agent market. There are some relatively solid options out there, including Caleb Ferguson<\/a>, Danny Coulombe<\/a>, Hoby Milner<\/a>, Justin Wilson<\/a>, Caleb Thielbar<\/a>, Drew Pomeranz<\/a> and Sean Newcomb<\/a> (who quietly enjoyed a career-best season in the bullpen). Most of those southpaws will pitch next season in their mid-to-late 30s, however. Ferguson is 29, but Coulombe, Milner, Wilson, Pomeranz and Thielbar are all 35 or older. Newcomb is 33 but has minimal track record in recent seasons.<\/p>\n

Romero is younger and more consistent than most of the options available in free agency. His projected $4.4MM price tag is probably less than what the majority of those free agent options will command, too. The Cardinals found themselves in a similar situation with closer Ryan Helsley<\/a> last offseason but bizarrely opted to hang onto him, hoping that demand for Helsley would increase and net a larger return in July, when the supply of impact relievers was more limited. Instead, Helsley had a first half that was solid but not quite up to his elite standards the two prior seasons. The Mets still swung a trade to acquire him, but it\u2019s fair to wonder whether the Cards would have done better had they flipped him last winter.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t seem likely that the Cardinals, under new president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, will repeat the approach that predecessor John Mozeliak took with Helsley. Bloom has already shipped out Gray, and the general tone in all of his offseason media sessions has been one of improving the player development department and taking a long-term approach to building the Cardinals back up. The return for Romero isn\u2019t going to be franchise-altering, but he ought to command a prospect or two that the Cards can plug into their minor league ranks. Holding onto him runs the risk of an injury or poor first-half performance tanking Romero\u2019s stock; a trade at some point this offseason feels quite likely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cardinals moved the first of what\u2019ll surely be several veterans earlier today when they traded right-hander Sonny…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[161580,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-313660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-jojo-romero","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}