Top prospect Romero flies to Seattle as safeguard

SEATTLE -- Enny Romero broke the news that he would be joining the Rays in Seattle by tweeting following message Tuesday afternoon: "Seattle Bound!! Very happy to be blessed with another big league opportunty."

Turns out the hard-throwing left-hander, ranked No. 4 on the Rays' Top 20 Prospect list, was en route to the Emerald City as insurance. Apparaently, an unspecified pitcher, or pitchers, on the staff had some issues.

"We just wanted to make sure that everybody was well," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "We just had a couple of little things that we were concerned that may cause us to do something different. But everybody checked out fine, so pretty much, Enny's getting frequent flier miles.

"The fact we're playing in Seattle makes it more difficult to get somebody here if in fact somebody was unable to go; if there was something more serious going on. So we had to take precautions to get him on the plane coming out this way."

Maddon said Romero would fly to Seattle and basically turn around. When asked if Romero had been informed yet that he will not be pitching, Maddon said, "I don't know. It depends on how tech savvy he is on the airplane. Perhaps somebody will text him or tweet out to him that you're out."