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The Twins are in agreement with veteran reliever Sergio Romo on a one-year, $5 million contract that includes a club option for 2021 and could max out at $10 million, per reports from MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal:
Romo deal with #MNTwins, per source: One year, $5M with club option, chance to earn $10M total. First with deal: @JesseSanchezMLB.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 16, 2019
Romo, who turns 37 in March, has bounced around quite a bit in recent years after spending the first nine seasons of his career with the Giants. The undersized right-hander with the wicked frisbee slider has spent time with the Dodgers, Rays, Marlins, and Twins, and after spending the final two months of the 2019 season in Minnesota, he obviously felt like he didn’t need to mess with a good thing.
While Romo’s numbers for the 2019 season were pretty good across the board — a 3.43 ERA with a 1.11 WHIP over 60.1 innings — he was particularly good after being dealt from the Marlins to the Twins on July 27, throwing for a 3.18 ERA with a 0.93 WHIP with 27 strikeouts and four walks over 22.2 innings. He’ll be looking to maintain that effectiveness heading into 2020, and there’s very significant reason to believe that he will, as he has a 2.92 career ERA and a 1.02 WHIP over 12 major-league seasons, having posted an ERA over 4.00 in just one of those seasons. While lefty Taylor Rogers is expected to continue in his role as Minnesota’s closer, Romo has previous ninth-inning experience (129 career saves, to be exact) and could be a candidate to step into that role if Rogers struggles or gets injured at some point.