New Cubs Minors RHP Tommy Romero Has Most Extreme OTT Arm Angle in Statcast Era
Since hiring Tyler Zombro away from Tread Athletics to serve in the front office as a special assistant advising on everything from pitch grips to player acquisitions, the Cubs have added several Tread alums to the organization. The latest of those is 27-year-old righty Tommy Romero, whose signing with the Cubs was announced by Tread via Instagram.
Initially drafted by the Mariners in the 15th round back in 2017, Romero bounced around between several organizations over parts of the last eight seasons. He spent most of that time in the Rays organization, where he would have come into contact with Zombro at multiple levels. Romero made his MLB debut in 2022, making three appearances for Tampa before being designated for assignment. He then made one appearance for the Nationals after being claimed off waivers, but has not pitched in MLB since.
His most recent action came with Guerreros de Oaxaca of the Mexican League, where he posted a 7.27 ERA over 8.2 innings in two starts. I’m not sure exactly what he’s been working on in the meantime, but he must have made significant changes to catch the Cubs’ eye. If forced to guess, I’d say the folks at Tread played around with what might be the most extreme over-the-top arm angle ever.
We don’t have data beyond 2020 and Romero’s sample size is obviously very small, but his 74-degree arm slot from that ’22 season is two degrees steeper than Kenley Jansen‘s results the same year for the highest ever in the Statcast era. We recently looked at how new Cubs addition Chris Flexen found renewed success by dropping a few ticks from the upper 60s and low 70s, so Romero could be in that same boat.
Both have gotten a lot of cut on their fastballs, but Romero has also generated a ton of ride on all of his offerings. He was likely chasing too much vertical break, perhaps at the behest of the Rays pitching folks, which could have hurt his consistency and taken away from his velocity. Being a big pronator kept him from developing a decent breaking ball, and chasing vert meant he got no depth on the splitter. Maybe adopting a kick-change or modifying the split could help.
Even without knowing much, we can say this is a risk-free move that gives the system a little more depth and could yield a surprise if things break the right way. I also find it more than mildly interesting that they’ve now targeted a pair of extreme arm-slot guys, though it’s possible Flexen will be a casualty of other procedural moves now that Cade Horton is up.
