Poll Time: What to do with Ricky Romero?

As you all know, Ricky Romero's last start, in Buffalo, did not go well. He only managed 2 outs, gave up 5 hits, 3 walks, 8 earned. It seems like he has an inning like this in every start he has. Even if he is doing ok for 2 or 3 innings, there will be that one inning that is just awful.

In his 4 Bisons starts, Ricky has pitched 13 innings, allowed 23 his, 20 walks, with just 3 strikeouts. There is really nothing good to say about his pitching. Well, he's only allowed 1 home run in those 13 innings, that's sort of good, right?

Dirk Hayhurst, on Baseball Central, suggested that Ricky might benefit from being moved to the bullpen. That starting every 5 days might have him thinking too much. That the 'ceremony' of the start gets in his head, standing there for the national anthem, he starts think and we all can see that thinking is something we want Ricky doing before he throws a ball.

Dirk's feeling is that if you put him out as a reliever, he can just come into a game without thinking about it for 5 days and, if he strikes the first batter out, pull him quick and let him have that small positive moment. Hope it starts a small spark and hope he builds off that. Try him again, a couple of days later, see if he can get 2 outs....

I'm all for it. It seems obvious that what he is doing now isn't working. I'd be pretty willing to try anything different.

The argument against that is that he gets more innings as a starter, more time to work on that delivery. He needs all the work he can get. He needs to be able to repeat the proper delivery, if we are still arguing that the delivery is the issue. I'm to the point that I'm not believing that there is a magic little change to his windup that will suddenly turn him into the guy we saw in 2011.

Some others have suggested that Ricky get sent home for a month or two, so he can get off the treadmill, clear his head and then come back at it. I don't know. I don't see this. He had the whole winter off and that didn't help, so why would we think more time off would do it for him.

Since we are paying him $7.5 million in each of the next two seasons, they aren't going to give up on him, at least this year or next.

Anyway, let's have a poll.