RON ROMANICK : He’s Preparing for Return to the Majors, but Question Is, Will It Be With Angels?

The Edmonton Trappers faced a serious problem as they left for Canada this morning after completing a Pacific Coast League series with the Tucson Toros Wednesday night: You almost can’t get there from here.

The Trappers were scheduled to fly to Phoenix, then to Los Angeles, to Salt Lake City and finally on to Edmonton, a circuitous itinerary that many of the Trappers hope will be extended ultimately to include Anaheim, where the parent Angels play.

Most hopeful, perhaps, is Ron Romanick, who knows the way to the Big A. He traveled it in reverse July 22 when he was demoted to the Angels’ Triple-A farm club after having failed in a series of attempts to retain his role as the varsity’s fifth starter.

The decision prompted some sharp language from both the 25-year-old Romanick and General Manager Mike Port, and set fans to wondering. Less than a year earlier, the right-hander rolled into August with a 13-4 record. He won just 1 of his last 10 starts last season, though, and then won just 5 of 18 starts this year.

So far, Romanick has started six games for the Trappers, and he will probably start two more before the Angels must decide if they are going to recall him before Sept. 1, making him eligible for the playoffs should the Angels win the American League West title.

There is no word from the Angels, no clear evidence as to the depths of disfavor into which Romanick has fallen. If anything, the Angels seem to suggest that Romanick is ticketed for trade, that he is working to re-establish his marketability.

Romanick, in the meantime, believes he is already there. He believes that by deciding to re-establish his fastball, rather than relying on finesse, he has re-established his career and is ready to pitch again in the majors--preferably for the Angels.

“I’m back,” he said. “I’m just not back in Anaheim yet.”

Romanick says that he is not bitter but that he is bewildered by the Angels’ refusal to elaborate on his future when neither Ray Chadwick, the rookie, nor Vern Ruhle, the veteran, have satisfied the team’s search for a fifth starter.

“You can get mad, you can get emotional, but what good is that going to do?” he said. “It doesn’t get me called up. It doesn’t win me any respect. I decided at the time that I had to come down and straighten myself out, make myself the best pitcher I could be again.”

Said Winston Llenas, Edmonton’s manager: “A lot of guys would have come down and said (bleep) it, but Ron’s attitude has been great. He hasn’t missed a turn, he hasn’t big-leagued it. He knew he had work to do and he’s gone about doing it.”

Said Marcel Lachemann, the Angel pitching coach, who is in frequent contact with Frank Reberger, Lachemann’s counterpart at Edmonton: “I give Ron credit. He’s gone down and done what he had to do, which was work at getting himself squared away. Some guys go down and say, ‘Well, I’ll be back in a matter of time no matter what.’ Many times it’s too late when they finally realize that’s not the way it works.”

Attitude, of course, is important, but ability is the bottom line. The Angels were wowed by Romanick’s when he jumped from Double-A in the spring of 1984 and won 12 games as a rookie. They grew uncertain about it when that 13-4 of ’85 began to disintegrate, and the struggle lingered through ’86.

Romanick now seems to be impressing people again. He has allowed only 11 hits and 7 runs in the 20 innings of his last 3 starts. He is throwing hard, challenging hitters with a fastball clocked in the mid to high 80s, and cutting back on his off-speed and breaking pitches.

Said Llenas, who managed Romanick at Nashua, N.H., before the pitcher jumped to Anaheim: “He had gotten too cute, but now he’s changing that. Now he’s back throwing the way he did when I had him. He knows that he’s got to use the fastball if he’s going to go back up. Use it or lose it. It’s still the best pitch in baseball.”

Preston Gomez, former Angel coach and big league manager who is now Port’s assistant, watched Romanick in his last two starts with the Trappers.

“There’s a night-and-day difference between this and what we were seeing in Anaheim,” Gomez said. “The other night he threw more fastballs in the one game than he did in the last two years combined.

“He’s never going to be in the 90s with it. He’s never going to strike out a lot of hitters. But he can throw it 85 and 86 and that makes his breaking pitches better, and his breaking pitches make his fastball better.”

Said Romanick: “I’m throwing better now than when I made the team in ’84. I’m not trying to trick people. You pitch aggressively and with confidence and good things happen. You get the double play. You get the ball hit at someone rather than blooped over their head. You’ve got control without having to think about it. Now I can remember the way I used to throw.”

If he can remember now, why couldn’t he remember earlier? If he can remember now, how and why did it get away from him in the first place?

Said Lachemann: “It didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual, progressive thing, and I’ll take the blame. I sat there and watched it without responding to it. I fell into the trap as much as Ron did.”

The trap?

“The main concern wasn’t with the number of fastballs he was throwing or the quality of them,” Lachemann said. “The concern was that he wasn’t challenging anyone with it. He was using it off the plate. He wasn’t throwing enough strikes with it. Consequently, it didn’t take hitters long to realize they could lay off the fastball and sit on his breaking pitches.

“This is not to say he will ever be a Roger Clemens, but he’s got to use the fastball to get people out, rather than just showing it to them.”

Romanick cited a combination of factors:

--The more success he had with his breaking pitches, the more he relied on them.

“Even when I was 13-4 I was painting (the corners),” he said. “I was fooling people. I was trying to be perfect. You pitch nine innings like that and it’s an emotional drain. You can’t afford one mistake. I was leaving every game with a headache.”

--The gradual separation of a bone in his right foot ultimately led to a complete break after the All-Star game of last year, when Romanick had a 1-5 record in his last 10 starts. It took a postseason CAT scan to detect the break, but Romanick knew all along that there was a problem.

“I was stupid enough to pitch with it because we were in the middle of a pennant race,” he said. “There were times I had to tape it so tightly that it turned blue. I never used it as an excuse and never even brought it up in my (salary) arbitration, but it definitely affected the way I pitched.

“There were times I could push off it, times I couldn’t. I’d throw 85 or 86 (m.p.h.) one inning and 81 the next. I’m sure I drove Lach nuts. I’m sure I gave him an ulcer.”

--The break was corrected by postseason surgery, but Romanick thought he could pick up where he left off when he was 13-4. He didn’t have 100% confidence in his foot, wasn’t committed to a change as he is now and wasn’t ready to “reteach” himself how to use the fastball amid the big-league demand on winning.

A 3-1 start helped convince him that he could still be successful using finesse. Then he fell into a familiar rut and the pressure built as his confidence diminished. He gave up 20 runs and 30 hits in the 20 innings of his last four starts. He felt that each was make or break. Port, in fact, was often quoted to that extent.

“There were all the innuendoes, all that pressure from the press and pressure from the front office,” he said. “It was overwhelming at times. I was looking over my shoulder every time I pitched.

“I mean, it got to the point where I didn’t know what I wanted to throw and second-guessed what I did. I was inconsistent. I couldn’t make a pitch when I needed it. I couldn’t pitch from behind in the count like I always had. I was getting hurt with two strikes or two outs because I wasn’t being aggressive, but I was afraid to change because I was afraid to make a mistake. I didn’t know if I’d get another chance.”

When he was finally sent out, Romanick knew there had to be a change but would have preferred a trip to the bullpen, where he figured he could develop a pattern of throwing hard for two or three innings and then expand on it.

He also would have preferred a trade to a trip to the minors and said that he knew that two or three clubs had been interested in him. He refused to identify them, though there were rumors of a possible deal with Pittsburgh for Rick Rhoden or with Philadelphia for Charles Hudson.

Then and now, Port said, he has never been close to a deal involving Romanick. He also denied harboring a grudge stemming from Romanick’s outspoken role as the Angel player representative before and during the brief strike of last year and his subsequent salary arbitration in which he was awarded $425,000, rather than the club’s offer of $250,000.

“We’ve come away without a decision before, and life goes on,” Port said of the arbitration. “We want to win games. There was no grudge, no vindictiveness. If there was, I could have created a spot for Ron at Quad Cities.

“I mean, we went from start to start, pulling for him just as much as he was hoping to find it. Every time he walked out, there we were thinking that it would now come together. The bottom line was that the results just weren’t there. The bottom line is that we’re involved in a pennant race and could only hold on for so long. We had to solidify the fifth starting position.”

Romanick sat in a cramped clubhouse at Hi Corbett Field. He seemed a long way from his Newport Beach condominium, his black Porsche, the Southern California life style that he will always return to, he said, no matter where and for whom he pitches. He was asked if he could have restored his confidence by continuing to start for the Angels.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I needed something I didn’t get either from myself or the people who have influence on me. I’m human. I need to be stroked at times. I needed some communication that wasn’t there. I needed someone to tell me what they wanted besides winning some games. The bewildering part of it is that no one really outlined what they wanted me to do here or where it might take me.

“I’ve won 31 games in less than three seasons in the big leagues,” he said. “It was devastating because I know I can pitch there, but I’m not bitter. I’m angry at myself for letting it happen.”

Rocked for 27 hits and 15 earned runs in the 14 innings of his first two starts at Edmonton, Romanick has since found his lost groove, urged on by Reberger and Lachemann.

“I’m happy with the way I’m pitching, but I can’t help wondering how many times I have to prove myself,” he said. “I mean, I feel that I’ve found myself, but I’m not sure I have anywhere to go. I’m down here knocking on the door and hoping someone is listening.”

He said all that is difficult to live with.

“It’s hard sitting here when you know you’re a major league pitcher,” he said. “It’s hard sitting here when the guys you’ve been playing with are in a pennant race and you know you can help them. It’s hard just sitting here when you know that fifth starting position is still up for grabs and that it should belong to you.”

Maybe this is the way the Angels wanted Romanick to feel. Maybe they thought it had all come too quickly and easily for him and that he was ready for shock treatment, all else having failed.

What about next week, next month, next year? Is he still in the Angels’ plans? Or is he expendable, now that the Angels have an assortment of gifted young pitchers, among them Chadwick and two of Romanick’s Edmonton teammates, Mike Cook and Willie Fraser, the Angels’ No. 1 selections in the 1985 June draft.

Lachemann said the Edmonton assignment may have been just what Romanick needed in terms of a fresh start, that reports on him are improving and that he remains a candidate for the fifth starting spot.

“Ron is a topic of conversation every time we talk about the rotation, and we talk about it every day,” he said.

Said Port: “Ron has got our attention again, but what our ultimate decision will be as far as September is concerned, well, we’re taking that a day at a time. He’s on his own down there. He’s trying to develop faith, trust and confidence on our part--or the part of another club.”

The Trappers have only 12 games left. Said Romanick: “The Angels have had a lot of people watching me, but there’s no communication. It seems like they’re trying to exhaust every other avenue first.”