  Jays pitcher Ricky Romero throws during Grapefruit League action against the Tigers in Dunedin, Fla., on Wednesday. (REUTERS/Fred Thornhill)
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DUNEDIN — His season debut said a lot about where Ricky Romero has been, where he is today and maybe where he’ll be tomorrow.
A year ago, Romero’s debut in his bid to make it to the majors was such a disaster — one walk after another — that he was very nearly sent back to the minor-league complex. Manager Cito Gaston said it looked like Romero was pitching with his hair on fire.
That’s when Brad Arnsberg went to bat for Romero and asked for just a bit more time to try to work on Romero’s mechanics and his approach.
“The rest is history,” said Gaston Wednesday, after Romero threw two innings, allowing a wind-assisted home run and little else. “He stayed for the whole year.”
Wednesday, as the starter in Toronto’s Grapefruit League opener, Romero not only went out to the mound full of confidence and control born of last year’s 13 wins, he went looking to add to it.
“That’s what I’m working on this spring: Throwing strikes and refining my pitches,” he said. “I feel like I’m right where I need to be.”
Romero has harnessed his talent in the last 12 months and it has whetted his appetite to take it to another level.
“I want to be known as a strike-thrower. I told (pitching coach Bruce Walton) in the dugout that I couldn’t care less about strikeouts.
“If I can get popups and one or two-pitch outs per hitter, that cuts down my walks and brings up my innings, allowing me to go deeper into the game.”
It wasn’t intentional on his part but Romero was sounding a lot like Roy Halladay, for whom pitching to contact is a core philosophy.
Seems to have worked for him. The funny thing for Halladay was that, once he decided he didn’t care about strikeouts, he started getting them in bunches, especially the last couple of seasons.
Romero doesn’t pretend to be in that elite class yet but if he is able to grasp that philosophy himself, there’s no telling how good he can be.
“I feel more relaxed,” he said. “When I got behind in the count, I was able to slow the game down to my pace and tell myself: ‘All right, I need to gather myself here and make a good pitch.’ ”
A lot of talk has been wasted about who is going to be the No. 1 on this Toronto pitching staff.
That may be a valid discussion in another three or four weeks but right now, with several candidates, it’s irrelevant.
Gaston isn’t dismissing the notion of Romero as his No. 1. He just isn’t ready to decide.
“I don’t have any concern about it,” Gaston said.
“You just have to remember one thing: He’s going to have to go against the best. If he’s facing No. 1 all the time, it is going to be tough. You certainly don’t want to destroy a kid at this age.”
It’s enough that Romero is hungry to get better. With that kind of attitude, he’ll end up where he’s supposed to be, no matter what anyone thinks.
