Ricky Romero: Playing days over

Romero announced Friday in a personal essay posted on Sportsnet.ca that he has retired from baseball.

Romero, 34, was the No. 6 overall pick in the vaunted 2005 first-year player draft. The lefty was one of nine first-round selections in the class to make an MLB All-Star team, but Romero never came close to replicating the 2.92 ERA and 1.14 WHIP over 225 innings he delivered for the Blue Jays in 2011. Romero suffered from extreme bouts of wildness throughout the 2012 season and was banished to the minors following 2013 spring training. He made just four appearances at the big-league level thereafter, bouncing around multiple levels of the minors and spending time in the Mexican League before he was out of baseball in 2018. The 34-year-old officially wraps up his once-promising big-league career with a 51-45 record, 4.16 ERA and 1.40 WHIP over 129 outings (127 starts) over parts of five seasons, all with Toronto.