So do injury and age. Drafted in 2017, he squeezed in 22 innings that year but missed nearly all of 2018, missed all of 2019, tossed a couple of innings in the majors in 2020 (so I assume was at the workout camp), managed just 36 innings in 2021 and just 15 innings this year. He's turning 27 with just 100 professional innings under his belt. He does have 149 Ks in those 100 innings so I won't be surprised if somebody gives him a minor-league contract and tries to turn him into a reliever.

No doubt character does matter but it's hardly determinative ... and it's not clear that off-field character matters much at all (i.e. every field has some hard-working successful alcoholics, addicts and abusers in it ... Miguel Cabrera for example has discussed his alcoholism).** Marcell Ozuna is still employed after all; LaRussa and Cox are in the HoF. What teams care about is reputational risk which is why Trevor Bauer may never pitch again.

** Which also assumes that alcoholism and addiciton are "makeup and character issues" rather than diseases. Without question driving drunk is a character issue so if the intro is only meant to apply to DWI then I withdraw this point.

truthfully, i've been expecting them to release him for a few years now; terrible character guy afaict.

This is probably an excuse to release a guy who just never developed, and happened to have some character issues.

Interesting comments here. I know nothing about the guy and was going to say that while DWI is bad (don't drive drunk kids!) it doesn't seem like a release-worthy offense. Sounds like this isn't Romero's first brush with being a ######### though.

This guy sounds like a knucklehead and had five years in his pro career to grow up - he hasn’t and the Nationals finally cut him
loose.