Drew Rom 2021

[Frobby]

5 perfect innings, 7 K’s, 41 of 54 pitches for strikes.   Not a single ball hit in the air in fair territory; 8 ground outs to go with the 7 K’s. That’s what you call finishing your regular season with a bang. 

Rom closes his AA season with a 3.83 ERA   In September, he threw 14 scoreless innings, allowing 5 hits and 1 walk, striking out 18.   

[Just Regular]

One of the 13 balls was after an 0-2 count and a foul ball that went over the left handed batter's head.   The next pitch was a low and away breaker for a swinging strike three.   It was a nice command and control moment.

Not sure if the catcher told him to hit the bull, or if he did it on his own.

[ChuckS]

Any chance he starts 22 in Norfolk?

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, ChuckS said:

Any chance he starts 22 in Norfolk?

I tend to doubt it.   It’s possible but I think he’ll get at least another month or two at Bowie.

[Just Regular]

Rom reached 40 Double-A innings last night, a mark attained by ~125 Northeast pitchers this year.

I get him 15th in Estimated K-BB%, 29th in K%, 20th in BB%.    Glenn Otto, Kutter Crawford, Roansy Contreras, Logan Allen, Jose Butto, Kyle Brnovich and Jhon Romero are the only others in Top 25% at both K rate and BB rate, Grayson has a few too many walks for that particular cherrypick.

Obviously Rom's personal setting is more on Yield HR's not Walks, and his HR/9 is right on the Bottom Third borderline, making the ERA a little high.   But he's throwing his strikes to AA hitters at an early age, so no shock some of them are handling them/teaching him stuff about how his pitches play.

Brnovich and Rom's lines are almost perfect twins:

3.75 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, .230 AVG allowed, 28.8 K%, 5.6 BB%, 1.4 HR/9 applies to both give or take ~2% of the raw numbers.   Brnovich has him 57-40 in AA innings.

[Frobby]

I’d probably choose Rom over Brnovich because I tend to favor command over stuff.   And of course he’s two years younger, so more time to develop.   You’re right that their Bowie ratios are strikingly similar in almost every category.  

[bobmc]

24 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I’d probably choose Rom over Brnovich because I tend to favor command over stuff.   And of course he’s two years younger, so more time to develop.   You’re right that their Bowie ratios are strikingly similar in almost every category.  

I know that you were always a follower of Alex Wells.  We always wondered how he would fare once he arrived to MLB.  Now we are getting an idea.  How do you compare Rom to A Wells in his trajectory?  

[Just Regular]

I feel like this offseason, and here's where I'd be curious Tony's Take or anyone who actually knows scouting, the X factor is is the high school pitcher draft pick still young enough there's another tick on the stuff? 

Fantastic year, but the bumps of Lowther, Wells, Smith, etc will haunt us all until somebody chases them away.   Maybe John Means could get a bulk rate at his shop this offseason, though hopefully Orioles pitchers by now feel less like they need to "take control of their careers" than they did a few years ago.

Rom's progress takes a little sting out of DL Hall's year.   I wouldn't say enough to make the 2021 outcomes for the young Lefty Hall/Rom portfolio even 5 out of 10, but maybe like a 3.

This year is my first noticing Number of Pitches on minorleaguebaseball's stat pages and despite the age gap (with Rom getting draft year experience before Delmarva as you'd reminded me), today's tally is Rom 3500, Brnovich 1500 professionally.

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, bobmc said:

I know that you were always a follower of Alex Wells.  We always wondered how he would fare once he arrived to MLB.  Now we are getting an idea.  How do you compare Rom to A Wells in his trajectory?  

I think Rom throws 2 mph or so faster on his FB.    What’s surprised me with Wells is that I just don’t see the plus command that was always touted in the minors, plus the differential between his fastball and changeup isn’t enough.   He had pretty good results in AAA this year and I’m hoping he still can sharpen up his tools and be a back end starter type despite his lousy major league results this year.   He’s a smart, resilient guy and hopefully he’ll come back strong next year having learned from some adversity this season.   But we’ll see.

Back to Rom, I think he’s got a little more to work with than Wells, but he’s also going to need his command to translate to the majors in order to succeed.   My guess is we don’t find out until 2023.

[Just Regular]

He did a somewhat extended Zoom with Rob Long and Jim Palmer just now as MASN grinds out two last week's of pregame shows.

Said Means helped him with his changeup when they were in Aberdeen, and he hopes it'll be an effective pitch for him next year.

Palmer had a Rhapsodo question and some of Rom's answer was about receiving feedback to see how his pitches match up with MLB pitches (not like Verlander yet, he said).

Palmer also gave an informal Blake Snell comp in the intro, so perhaps he sees some mix similarities.    Snell's a much bigger guy though.

[Just Regular]

Moving through figuring out how excited to get, I compiled some numbers on High School pitchers from his 2018 draft year.  The old regime put 650K on him, which while not Top 5 18-year-old prime Grayson-level $$$, did actually rate as Top 20 money for high school pitchers that year.

Having seen the Mancini/Means/Mullins successes of recent years, I've probably shifted some in my belief that simply showing up for work and growing skills year in year out is more important than I've thought at times in the past.

And here, Rom shines.   After the elite Five Guys of the 2018 high school arms, here are the reps the Next Dozen biggest bonus baby arms have earned/won.   Pitches rounded off to nearest 100.

3800 CIN Lyon Richardson (results: 5-19, 4.88 ERA)

3500 BAL Drew Rom (17-6, 2.89)

2900 MIN Simeon Woods-Richardson  

2800 TOR Adam Kloffenstein

2600 TB Taj Bradley

1900 HOU Jayson Schroeder

1600 PIT Braxton Ashcraft

1400 CLE Lenny Torres

1300 TEX Mason Englert

1100 CLE Ethan Hankins

500 TEX Owen White

300 LAA William Holmes

200 WAS Mason Denaburg

The elite high schoolers from that year here measure Grayson 3300, Weathers 3300, Liberatore 3200, Winn 2400.

I'm curious to see how list makers will peg him compared to Hall/Bradish/Baumann as Orioles lists start getting built.

 

[LookinUp]

On 9/18/2021 at 9:38 AM, Frobby said:

I’d probably choose Rom over Brnovich because I tend to favor command over stuff.   And of course he’s two years younger, so more time to develop.   You’re right that their Bowie ratios are strikingly similar in almost every category.  

Interesting take. I definitely favor age and results in general, but when it comes to stuff versus command, I'll fall on the side of stuff. With that said, one of the more recent discussions of stuff is spin rates and I have no idea if the velo differences also translate into spin rate differences with these guys.

Rom is younger than Brnovich and has nice results, but I'd really like to see one of his predecessors (Lowther/Wells) start to click at the ML level before I rank him too highly.

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, LookinUp said:

Interesting take. I definitely favor age and results in general, but when it comes to stuff versus command, I'll fall on the side of stuff. With that said, one of the more recent discussions of stuff is spin rates and I have no idea if the velo differences also translate into spin rate differences with these guys.

Rom is younger than Brnovich and has nice results, but I'd really like to see one of his predecessors (Lowther/Wells) start to click at the ML level before I rank him too highly.

Re-reading my own comment, it was overly simplistic.  I think the biggest factor with Rom is his age.  21 and more than holding his own in AA is impressive. He’s never going to average 94 mph with the heater but his age makes you think his velocity could tick up a bit more.   

As to Lowther and Wells, I’m just not seeing the command each reputedly had.   At least, not consistently.   I certainly always have understood that Wells’ mistakes were going to get clobbered.   I just expected him to hit his spots a lot more often than he has to date in the majors.   Lowther wasn’t reputed to have quite the level of command as Wells, but I still expected better than I’ve seen.   He’s missing some bats at least (9.9 K/9).   I haven’t given up on either of them, but they’ll need to be sharper and more consistent if they want to survive in the majors.  
 

[LookinUp]

37 minutes ago, Frobby said:

As to Lowther and Wells, I’m just not seeing the command each reputedly had.   At least, not consistently.   I certainly always have understood that Wells’ mistakes were going to get clobbered.   I just expected him to hit his spots a lot more often than he has to date in the majors.   Lowther wasn’t reputed to have quite the level of command as Wells, but I still expected better than I’ve seen.   He’s missing some bats at least (9.9 K/9).   I haven’t given up on either of them, but they’ll need to be sharper and more consistent if they want to survive in the majors.  
 

I do think guys like Lowther and Wells are case-studies for why pitchers should prove their worth at all levels, particularly with the difference in baseballs at AAA. My assumption is that the definition of command and control gets much more refined as you go up in levels and that guys need to prove they have it at each level, particularly guys with less pure stuff. AA's precision either doesn't get the job done in the majors or has been lost by our guys, possibly because of the balls. 

Anyway, pitchers simply get away with more mistakes if you have better stuff in general, so I'm sure we're on the same page in valuing some good combination of stuff/command over a choice of one or the other, with neither being below serviceable.

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

I do think guys like Lowther and Wells are case-studies for why pitchers should prove their worth at all levels, particularly with the difference in baseballs at AAA. My assumption is that the definition of command and control gets much more refined as you go up in levels and that guys need to prove they have it at each level, particularly guys with less pure stuff. AA's precision either doesn't get the job done in the majors or has been lost by our guys, possibly because of the balls. 

Anyway, pitchers simply get away with more mistakes if you have better stuff in general, so I'm sure we're on the same page in valuing some good combination of stuff/command over a choice of one or the other, with neither being below serviceable.

Wells at least pitched to a 3.29 ERA in 54.2 IP at Norfolk this year.   That’s pretty solid.  Lowther on the other hand threw to a 6.82 in 30.1 innings and was moved back and forth on the roster multiple times.