{"id":348011,"date":"2025-12-14T10:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T10:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/348011\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T10:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T10:04:10","slug":"yankees-interested-in-jojo-romero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/348011\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Interested In JoJo Romero"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cardinals have been getting a lot of calls<\/a> about left-hander JoJo Romero<\/a>, and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/a> reports that the Yankees are one of the teams showing interest.\u00a0 The Mariners were the only other team publicly known to be<\/a> in on Romero, though it isn\u2019t known if Seattle is still involved now that Jose A. Ferrer<\/a> has been acquired<\/a> from the Nationals.<\/p>\n

Romero is projected<\/a> to earn $4.4MM in 2026, which is his final season of arbitration control before free agency.\u00a0 With the Cardinals in rebuild mode, Romero is a logical trade candidate, and moving him now rather than at the trade deadline allows St. Louis to both land a larger return and avoid the risk of an in-season injury to the 29-year-old southpaw.<\/p>\n

From New York\u2019s perspective, Devin Williams<\/a> and Mark Leiter Jr.<\/a> have both departed in free agency, and Luke Weaver<\/a> is still on the open market.\u00a0 Ryan Yarbrough<\/a> was re-signed to add more left-handed depth to the pen, though Yarbrough is more of a swingman than a true reliever.\u00a0 Veteran Tim Hill<\/a> is expected to hold down one lefty spot in the relief corps, and Brent Headrick<\/a> and Jayvien Sandridge<\/a> are other left-handers on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s certainly room here for the Yankees to add some left-handed experience to the mix, and Romero would be a nice fit after three seasons of success in the Cardinals\u2019 bullpen.\u00a0 Romero began his career in the Phillies organization but didn\u2019t start putting things together until he landed in St. Louis as the return in the trade deadline swap that brought Edmundo Sosa<\/a> to Philadelphia in 2022.<\/p>\n

Romero has a 2.93 ERA over 156 2\/3 innings for the Cards since Opening Day 2023, and his ERA has gotten progressively better in each season.\u00a0 His sparkling 2.07 ERA over 61 innings in 2025 was the highlight, though a 4.10 SIERA reflects Romero\u2019s lack of strikeouts and his mediocre 11.4% walk rate.\u00a0 The latter number was by far Romero\u2019s highest over his three seasons with the Cards, and is something of an ominous callback to the control problems that clouded his time with the Phillies.<\/p>\n

Still, Romero\u2019s bread-and-butter is inducing grounders and soft contact.\u00a0 Romero has a 53.7% grounder rate over his MLB career, and his 35.1% hard-hit ball rate in 2025 was a personal best over a full season.\u00a0 While his homer rate has been known to fluctuate, Romero did a great job of keeping the ball in the park last year, with just two homers allowed over his 60 frames.\u00a0 Romero\u2019s 22.8% career strikeout rate is respectable enough that Romero isn\u2019t a complete groundball specialist, even if he doesn\u2019t miss a ton of bats.<\/p>\n

Some teams may balk at the lack of strikeouts, but overall, it makes sense that there\u2019s broad interest in an inexpensive left-handed reliever with Romero\u2019s track record for leverage work.\u00a0 That said, it isn\u2019t a lock that Romero will be dealt, as Goold writes that the Cardinals themselves are looking for experienced relief help in their bullpen.\u00a0 If none can be found in free agency or on the trade market, it is possible St. Louis might just stick with Romero in lieu of a particularly attractive trade offer, and perhaps wait until the season begins to restart trade talks.\u00a0 Or, if the Cardinals land another veteran reliever sooner rather than later, the Cards might feel secure enough to start more readily shopping Romero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cardinals have been getting a lot of calls about left-hander JoJo Romero, and Derrick Goold of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[161580,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-348011","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\/348011","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=348011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}