Sergio Romo’s hand feels fine. He feels even better about the Miami Marlins’ bullpen
Adrenaline helped Sergio Romo finish out 1 1/3 innings and pick up a win for the Miami Marlins after a line drive hit him in the meat of his glove hand in the eighth inning Saturday. A day later, the pitcher is a little sore, but available for the Marlins as they wrap up a three-game series Sunday at SunTrust Park.
Romo had X-rays done on his left hand after Miami’s 4-2 win against the Atlanta Braves and everything came back negative. He has a bone bruise, which shouldn’t sideline him.
“I’ll be sore for a couple days,” Romo said, “but hopefully no longer than that.”
Even if it had been more serious, the Marlins (3-6) would have been in pretty good shape, Romo thinks.
In the win Saturday, the Marlins bullpen combined for five scoreless innings to give Miami (3-6) a chance to even the series with the Braves (4-4) heading into the Sunday rubber match at 1:20 p.m. in Atlanta.
Days like those are quickly becoming the expectation for Romo, who signed a one-year deal with the Marlins in February. The 36-year-old has been blown away not just by the potential of Miami’s bullpen, but how the group is already performing.
“We’re pretty nasty. I ain’t going to lie, but I say that with all due respect,” Romo said. “I don’t say that to disrespect anybody around the league or anything. I’m not sure we have an actual identity yet as a bullpen, like as a whole, but there’s a lot of arms here. The stuff, the quality — it goes from even our guy who’s having our first go-around in the big leagues.”
Those five scoreless innings lowered the Marlins’ bullpen ERA to 3.38, the 10th best in MLB — a far cry from last season when Miami posted the worst bullpen ERA in the Majors.
It’s not exactly surprising internally to see the massive step forward. Part of the reason the Marlins released starting pitcher Dan Straily just before the season began was to get some of their promising young arms up to the big leagues. Every starter is 27 or younger and all but two relievers are 28 or younger. Aside from Romo, the other four relief pitchers to throw Friday -- Drew Steckenrider, Adam Conley, Nick Anderson and Tayron Guerrero -- all faster than 95 mph with their four-seam fastball, including Guerrero, who averages 98.2 mph.
“It’s exciting to see the promise, but I do see this team coming in and just being a powerhouse,” Romo said. “Legitimately, the most aggressive, here you go — almost to where it’s, you know exactly what you’re going to get, but it’s too much to handle.”
For now, the identity is probably depth and upside. Manager Don Mattingly doesn’t have a set closer, and Romo and Conley each have one save already.
What he does have a is a wealth of options he can use in a variety of spots. No one out of the bullpen has more than one outing with an earned run. If Miami is going to play close games, it needs this sort of performance.
“We’ve got a number of guys late that I think have been OK,” Mattingly said. “They’ve all had a little bit of a glitch — one little outing or something in there — but ... we’ve actually thrown the ball pretty well, quite honestly, as a staff. We’ve had a couple of big innings that have hurt us, where we couldn’t stop the bleeding, out of our starters, but other than that we’ve really thrown the ball pretty well. We’ve kept ourselves in games.”
Here the lineups for the series finale at SunTrust Park:
Miami Marlins
Miguel Rojas, SS
Martin Prado, 1B
Brian Anderson, 3B
Starlin Castro, 2B
Lewis Brinson, CF
Peter O’Brien, RF
Chad Wallach, C
Rosell Herrera, LF
Caleb Smith, SP
Atlanta Braves
Ozzie Albies, 2B
Josh Donaldson, 3B
Freddie Freeman, 1B
Ronald Acuna Jr., LF
Johan Camargo, RF
Dansby Swanson, SS
Ender Inciarte, CF
Alex Jackson, C
Sean Newcomb, SP
This story was originally published April 7, 2019 at 12:55 PM.