Velocity and Location fuel Jordan Romano’s breakout

It’s only been nine innings in this short season, but Jordan Romano is easily the biggest success story of the season.

He’s given up just a single hit and he’s struck out 13. In the absence of Ken Giles, Romano has become the best arm in the Blue Jays ‘pen.

Romano has the big fastball you want in a power reliever.

That is just perfect spot for that pitch. Romano didn’t elevate the fastball to this degree last season and that was a big part of why he had a 7.63 ERA.

Romano threw 198 fastballs last season and as you can see on the left, the majority of them were right in the heart of the plate. It doesn’t matter how hard you throw batters can hit any fastball in that location. This season however you can see the change. There are still a few fastballs in the strike zone but a large portion of them are like that pitch to Cabrera, up and out of the zone.

It helps as well if you can increase velocity and spin the way Romano has. Per Baseball Savant, Romano has increased his velocity on his four-seamer from 94.6mph to 96.6mph, and his spin rate has increased from 2261rpm to 2305rpm.

When you combine better location with more speed and spin you are going to get more strikeouts and that’s exactly what Romano has done. Romano has had 12 plate appearances end on his fastball and seven of them have been strikeouts, per Fangraphs. His swinging-strike rate on the pitch has almost doubled from last season up to 20.4%.

For as good as his fastball has been, it’s not even Romano’s primary pitch. In fact, he only throws it about 40% of the time. The other 60%? He throws this nasty slider.

That slider has 35.4 inches of drop which is 2.9% more compared to similar sliders. That is four inches less drop than last season. He has also started throwing his slider significantly harder than before. Last year he threw his slider 84.7mph, this year he’s averaging 88.7mph. The velocity increase has also come with an increased spin rate, going from 2076rpm to 2186 rpm. And just like with his fastball the location of his slider has improved.

He’s taken his slider out of the heart of plate, and started to throw it down out of the strike zone with more regularity. It’s the same story as with the fastball, more speed, more spin, better location, more swings and misses, and more K’s. His slider has an 18.4% swinging-strike rate, up close to 4%, and six of his 13 strikeouts have come on the pitch.

With a better fastball and a tweaked slider, Jordan Romano has become a go-to arm in a bullpen that really needed it. In a small sample, his location has greatly improved and if he can keep this up over the full season the Blue Jays have potentially found their next closer.