Blue Jays non-committal on Jordan Romano's 2025 role

As the official start of the offseason inches closer, the Toronto Blue Jays are going to have a boatload of decisions to make. The club needs another catcher, they need a power-hitting bat and they sure as heck need multiple relievers to add to their awful 2024 'pen.

For the vast majority of the regular season, the Jays were without Jordan Romano, their All-Star closer. In his absence, the likes of trade chip Yimi Garcia and long-time New York Yankee Chad Green filled in admirably. Garcia got shipped off to Seattle while Green did a decent-but-not-great job at holding down the role. Even on losing teams, somebody needs to be the one to get the ball in save opportunities.

Romano, 31, got bit by the injury bug multiple times this year and finished with just 15 appearances. He earned eight saves in that time but surrendered 10 runs on 16 hits in just 13.2 innings of work, resulting in a 6.59 ERA and 63 ERA+. These numbers are all well below what the Jays expected from him heading into the season.

As the offseason nears, it sounds like the Blue Jays are not quite ready to commit to Romano being their permanent closer in 2025. At one point, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet floated the possibility that they non-tender him this winter and perhaps look to bring him back on a low-cost deal. The right-hander made $7.75M this year, so the odds of him commanding a raise into the $8M range are high. This won't work for a player who hasn't proven to be a reliable closer in quite some time.

Blue Jays undecided on who 2025 closer will be

In one of Kaitlyn McGrath's latest pieces over at The Athletic, she had comments from GM Ross Atkins on Romano's role moving forward. Even though nothing was set into stone, it sounds like there's some uncertainty.

When Atkins was first asked who'd be the Blue Jays' closer in 2025, he simply responded with "I don't know." From there, he said that Romano would need to come back and pitch like the pitcher he once was and that he believes the Canadian hurler has what it takes to bounce back.

Nowhere in there did he commit to a thing. This leaves the door open for another option to jump in, even if peak Romano is the best one the Blue Jays have got.

On the free agent front, Tanner Scott, Jeff Hoffman, Carlos Estevez, Craig Kimbrel, Kirby Yates and Blake Treinen stand out above the rest in terms of pitchers that could slot in at closer. Green will also be back and Garcia will be a free-agent option as well. Otherwise, relying on Romano to turn things around is the next best option.

We're talking about a pitcher who has two All-Star Games under his belt and whose only full seasons in the game (min. 20 appearances) have resulted in ERAs below 3.00. He's as rock-solid as they come when he's on his A-game, so getting him back on track is going to be paramount. The best option would likely be to non-tender him, re-sign him to a short-term deal with incentives scattered throughout and see where it goes. He's born to be the Blue Jays' closer, but only when he's at his best.