Underrated Ubaldo

Precious little went right for the Colorado Rockies in 2008. On the heels of a campaign in which the club improbably won 20 of 21 games to finish out the regular season and advanced to the World Series, the Rockies suffered multiple injuries and came crashing back to earth, posting a 74-88 Pythagorean record.

One bright spot in an otherwise bleak season was the continued development of right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez. Signed out of the Dominican Republic as a non-drafted free agent in 2001, Jimenez has long adorned prospect lists on the basis of pure stuff; mid-to-upper 90’s heat and occasionally nasty breaking pitches have a way of catching the attention of scouts. While Jimenez showed a propensity to miss bats in the minors (8.81 K/9), he also displayed less-than-stellar control by issuing 4.47 free passes per nine innings.

Ubaldo got a brief cup of coffee with Colorado in 2006 before making it to the big leagues for good in July of 2007, when he was inserted into the starting rotation. Given his performances at AAA Colorado Springs, however, there were reasons to doubt his readiness:

2006: 78.1 IP, 5.06 ERA, 7.35 K/9, 4.94 BB/9
2007: 103 IP, 5.85 ERA, 7.78 K/9, 5.42 BB/9

Granted, Colorado Springs is a tough pitching environment (inflating offensive production between 6-9% from 2005-2007, per Baseball Prospectus 2008), but walking well over 5 batters per nine innings is certainly not the hallmark of a finished product.

Despite the ugly numbers in the high minors, Jimenez actually handled himself quite well. While his control was still rough around the edges (4.06 BB/9) he K’d 7.46/9 while showcasing a fastball that popped the catcher’s mitt at an average speed of 95.8 MPH. In 82 innings of work, Jimenez posted a 4.74 FIP ERA. Considering his home environment and his lukewarm performances at AAA, that qualified as a successful debut.

In his first full year in the rotation in 2008, Ubaldo made 34 starts, lowering his FIP ERA to a tidy 3.83. He struck out a few more batters (7.79 K/9), though he also regressed a bit with his control (4.67 BB/9). Interestingly, Jimenez became much more of a groundball pitcher this past season:

2007: 1.26 GB/FB, 46.4 GB%
2008: 1.94 GB/FB, 54.4 GB%

Perhaps trading some speed for movement, Jimenez threw his fastball a little bit slower (94.9 MPH) in 2008. If Ubaldo can keep up this worm-killing trend in the future, it would bode very well for his career prospects. Clearly, Coors Field is not a venue where one wants to put the ball in the air with any frequency. With fewer balls leaving the infield, Jimenez slashed his HR/9 rate from 1.1 in ’07 to 0.5 in ’08. That number will likely regress somewhat next season (his HR/FB% was a very low 6.9%), but fewer flyballs should mean fewer cheap home runs at Coors.

Ubaldo Jimenez (25 in January) remains somewhat raw, but his combination of solid strikeout rates and groundball tendencies make him an intriguing starter. Armed with mid-90’s heat, an 86 MPH power slider, a 75 MPH curve and an 86 MPH changeup, Jimenez has the repertoire to make hitters’ lives difficult in the NL West. He will likely always walk his fair share of hitters, but if Jimenez can miss bats and keep his infield defense busy, he could develop into a fantasy stalwart.