Romero pitched very well in the last month or two of AA last year.  I honestly thought that he would continue that success this year and be in AAA by now, knocking on the door.  I wonder what kind of impact his shoulder injuries have had on his game.  He's missed time with injuries far too frequently for my liking.

I have always had a concern about college pitchers from successful programs such as Romero.  You always hear the horror stories of how a kid throws 300 pitches in the span of four or five days and it seems to be getting more and more common.  That doesn't even take into account the number of inning that Romero may have thrown in a summer program.  It seems like more and more college age pitchers are coming up with arm problems early in their proffessional career.  There was a story in the local paper here the other day about a kid from Michigan who is pitching in the Tigers system for Oneota and can't get on the mound because he has shoulder problems that he discovered after pitching in the regionals for Michigan.

More and more kids now are playing in summer leagues where teams are run more like a minor league organization, except there is no regard for pitch count.  I was a Northwoods League game a week or two ago watching the Battle Creek team play.  They have a kid on their team from UC-Irvine who pitched in the regionals, the super regionals and twice in the College World Series.  I have seen the kid pitch twice and once he threw eight innings and the second time he threw 8.2 innings.  I kept an "unofficial" pitch count on him the second time because I was curious and he was at ~140 pitches unofficially before he was taken out. 

I wonder why so many pitchers develop arm problems??????  :)

Tolisano has the numbers of a 20 year ML veteran.  Low BA, high BB rate, high HR rate and low 2B rate.