Before Cardinals placed him on injured list, lefty pitcher had made most of his opportunity

Some choices made by the Cardinals as they play out the string on the 2023 season are important in what they reveal about next year’s team. After dumping talent at the deadline and filling out the roster as best they can to survive, there are meaningful opportunities being provided.

Masyn Winn, for instance, has a chance to go into next year as the team’s starting shortstop. The more looks the Cardinals get at Richie Palacios, the more he has a shot to stick as a utility player. Drew Rom may not be quite ready for primetime, but he’s done enough to demonstrate that he can help in a pitching emergency.

Perhaps no one, though, has benefited from and made more of his opportunity more than lefty JoJo Romero.

The Cardinals sent Romero to Memphis to open the year, largely due to having limited opportunities to see him live thanks to his departure for Team Mexico and the World Baseball Classic. After an injury to Packy Naughton and early season struggles for Zack Thompson, Romero found himself on the ascent, and after Jordan Hicks was shipped out at the deadline, he also found himself inheriting the ninth inning.

Even for a bad team, leverage spots carry pressure. Romero has risen to it, both on and off the field.

“I think JoJo has done a really nice job,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “He’s been reliable, and he’s taken the ball often.”

Taking the ball often is not a skill to be taken lightly, and it’s one that carries caché among the Cardinals’ coaches. Romero has made 12 appearances since July 30, the day Hicks was traded, and in seven of those 12 appearances pitched more than one inning.

On Monday, the Cardinals moved Romero to the injured list with patellar tendonitis in his left knee, after another extended appearance this past Friday night. The move was backdated to September 2, the maximum amount of time allowed, which seems to imply optimism that he could pitch in the season’s closing weeks.

Marmol, on both Saturday and Sunday, made a point to mention on those days that Romero was “down,” whereas the recently returned from the injured list Ryan Helsley was described as, “can’t pitch today” on Saturday and “asked for another day” on Sunday.

Those descriptions amount to the same thing when it comes to in-game usage, but they don’t mean the same thing, and the Cardinals and their manager have not been shy about their appreciation and preference for players who are eager to take the field. They would much prefer a player have to be talked down from competing than talked into re-evaluating how they feel.

“I’ve been more impressed by his work before taking the mound than anything,” Marmol said of Romero. “It’s impressive the way he’s gone about his business and how he prepares for every day. Stuff in the weight room, advanced scouting stuff, he’s taken on that [closer] role extremely well.

“He’s got a personality for it, but he’s also led well in that clubhouse with the bullpen, instilling certain things that are important. I’ve really enjoyed watching him take over that role the last month or two.”

Clearly the Cardinals intend for Romero to enter next season in a prominent role in their bullpen, if not perhaps holding down its back end. Helsley, whose season has been derailed by injury, poses an interesting dilemma. He was discussed by the Cardinals in trade conversations last winter, opted for (and lost) a salary arbitration hearing, and was up and down in his effectiveness before missing three months of the season with a forearm strain.

History suggests that the team has more often than not rapidly parted ways with players with whom they are dragged into arbitration hearings. Helsley, who will turn 30 in the midst of next season, has only two more years of team control and has the sort of high-velocity upside that’s craved around the league.

As the Cardinals work to reshape their starting rotation, there will inevitably be trickle down effects into the bullpen. Even now, with three veterans on the staff who arrived via minor league contracts and are unlikely to return (Jacob Barnes, Casey Lawrence, Andrew Suárez), there are clear vacancies that might require some external supplementing even ahead of where they slot their in-house options.

Romero has gone from option to constant, and has pitched his way into a firm spot in the 2024 bullpen, seizing the opportunity with which he was presented. He perhaps won’t lead the next great Cardinals team in saves, but he has a real opportunity to be one of its highest leverage options, and the respect with which he’s spoken about in the manager’s office is a strong clue as to how his work has been perceived by those who matter.

“Some of it, you see it as it’s happening,” Marmol said of Romero’s growth. “Put it all together, and it creates a winning culture, for sure.”

After this season, the Cardinals could certainly stand to nurture more of that.