Ubaldo Jimenez Back to his Dominant Old Self for Baltimore Orioles?
By Josh Sippie
Ubaldo Jimenez had a really great year in 2010. In fact, it was pretty much the best year he ever had, and arguably the only great year he had among a slue of bad/decent/good years. But the 2010 dominance of Ubaldo Jimenez has never been seen again… until this year.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
Five years and two teams later, Ubaldo Jimenez is putting up numbers that are pretty darn similar to those of his big year. But are the stats exactly as they seem, or has Ubaldo Jimenez just gotten a tad lucky this year? Chris Towers of CBS Sports poses some pretty interesting stats about the hard-hurling right hander.
For starters, Ubaldo Jimenez is getting far less swings than ever before. Only 34.7% of his pitches are being swung at, his lowest rate ever. Couple that with the fact that only 51.2% of his strikes are being swung at and we’re starting to get into some strange territory. Why isn’t anyone swinging the bat? Maybe the once-wild Ubaldo Jimenez has become an absolute ace at painting corners. Maybe batters just don’t bother swinging at his overpowering stuff. Perhaps he’s getting a lot of fortunate strike calls.
Better yet, maybe it’s a combination of the three. After all, one thing is for certain, while Ubaldo Jimenez has never posted outrageous strikeouts numbers, his best success always comes when his walks are down. Well, his walks are the lowest they’ve been in his entire career at just 2.7 BB/9. He’s inducing far more ground balls as well, so maybe this ‘new Ubaldo Jimenez’ isn’t a reemergence of his old self, but a reinvention of it.
Another one of Jimenez’s most telling stats is his opponents average on balls in play, which currently sits at .257. This too, is the lowest in his career. So while the perhaps-unreasonably high strikeout numbers may falter off in time, pitchers don’t need to strikeout a ton of batters to be successful, and maybe it’s just taken this long for Ubaldo Jimenez to realize that.
Take Dallas Keuchel for instance. Keuchel only strikes out 6.4 batters a game, yet he’s arguably the front runner to start for the American League in the all star game. How does he do it? He does’t walk batters and he keeps the ball in the park. Ubaldo Jimenez is a power-arm pitcher taking a much different approach to power-arm pitching – or at least that’s what the statistics show.
Consider the year Keuchel is having. He’s only walking 2.8 batters per nine. Jimenez is one-upping him at 2.7 per nine. Keuchel is keeping guys off base with a .974 WHIP. Ubaldo Jimenez is not far being with a 1.033. Keuchel’s BABIP is better at a .228, but not everyone can be Dallas Keuchel.
Ubaldo Jimenez is rocking a 67.3% ground ball rate as well. That is the mark of a Dallas-Keuchel-like pitcher. Instead of trying to overpower the opposition with heat, which hardly works in this day and age, he’s allowing batters to get themselves out on his sinker. After all, why should he have to work extra hard to get three swings and misses when he could just allow the hitter to pound the ball into the ground and trot dejectedly to first base en route to the dug out?
This kind of success is sustainable. Even if his strikeout numbers drop off by a full two or three per nine, he can still continue to induce ground balls and avoid walks and the success will follow suit. This kind of success is much more sustainable than success centered on swings and misses. So while this isn’t exactly the old Ubaldo Jimenez, it may be just as good, if not better