Forum > Nolan Ryan & Ubaldo Jimenez
For reference, Ubalo's home/road career ERA: 3.69/3.51. FIP home/road: 3.81/3.34.
xFIP home/road: 3.99/3.68.
t ball
How about
Ian kinsler
Tanner sheppers
Chris Davis
Julio borbon
And Olt
For ubaldo
Martin
i feel i must repeat. i love me some Ubaldo, but as a former pitcher, his mechanics scare the hell out of me. granted you can say the same thing about lincecum and he's bee fairly healthy.... but his semi catapult like motion just screams Tommy John Surgery with every pitch. IMO i'd take the safer bet in Chacin and save the prospects.
then again just the though of having Ubaldo 2010 form...... WS repeat.
oh and what is the point in mentioning pitching in a difficult home park. All the rangers pitchers do it everyhome game. RBPiA would be a walk in the park compared to Coors
dcaggie06
Once Ubaldo gets over the hump called consistency, he will be a perennial CY candidate (similar to Verlander; they have very comparable stuff) I would go get him if I was JD with this farm system, but cost would be astronomical and maybe too much for what he has shown this season.
Ryan from Waco
@dcaggie06 - Arlington being an easier place to pitch than Coors was exactly my point. If he can succeed in Coors he's likely to do a little better here.
@Ryan - I think pitching in Coors might very well have something to do with his lack of consistency. Then again, high walk guys like that aren't usually all that consistent. Looking at his splits, though, his BB rates are typically very high in April, 5.49 per 9, then quite a bit lower the rest of the year:
May 3.28
June 3.26
July 3.85
Aug 3.56
Sep 4.52
t ball
How about
Ian kinsler
Tanner sheppers
Chris Davis
Julio borbon
And Olt
For ubaldo
One of those (Borbon) will be out past the deadline, in all likelihood. One of the other ("Sheppers") doesn't exist. And I really dig Jimenez, but I'm thinking really hard and long about whether I'm prepared to include Kinsler in that package, given the added risk of swapping a top-flight position player for a top-flight pitcher.
Dave Krieger from the Denver Post had an interesting column on the ~2 mph drop in fastball velocity he's seen this year:
In separate conversations with Jimenez and Apodaca over the weekend, they agreed on one thing: Ubaldo's velocity is not what it was a year ago. Then, he was routinely in the upper 90s, occasionally touching triple digits. Now, he vacillates between the high 80s and low 90s.
"I know my velocity is not there, so I have to find a way to pitch with whatever I have," Jimenez said.
"If you compare where he was last year, it's similar locations," Apodaca said. "It's just not getting there as fast. He is not going to be a pinpoint control-type guy. He'll hit really good locations on occasion, but primarily he's going to have a lot of the plate with movement and with stuff. And the thing that's missing right now is what we've gotten used to, and that's the stuff."
Diagnosing the problem is easy. Fixing it is not.
From the outside, the club appears to have accepted Jimenez's explanation that he was unable to build up his usual arm strength because of a variety of minor ailments in spring training and a short stint on the disabled list in April to let his thumb cuticle heal.
But Apodaca has another theory. It goes back to spring training too, but not to the minor finger, hip and groin injuries that Jimenez says made it impossible for him to "let it go."
The Rockies' pitching coach admits his theory is largely speculation, but he fears that Jimenez is a victim of the law of unintended consequences.
"Every pitcher wants to always get better," Apodaca said. "And his goal in spring training was to be much more consistent in the strike zone with much better downhill plane, and be more efficient as far as pitch counts in a game. He wanted to get deeper into the game with fewer pitches.
"There's nothing wrong with trying to get better, but realizing who you are and what you do best is important too. And I think somewhere we're not doing the things that really put his name on the map. And that was a guy that was feared by right-handed hitters because he might throw one down and away, the next one might be underneath your chin."
Apodaca thinks the emphasis on control not only makes hitters more comfortable against Jimenez, it may take away from his velocity as well.
Joey Matschulat
Well I was going to come on here and talk about how I wouldn't necessarily blame Coors for Ubaldo's inconsistency, but his HR/9 at home this year is 1.15 compared to 0.16 on the road. These numbers are surely helped by playing multiple away games in the homer depressed NL West parks (AT&T, Dodger Stadium, Petco in that order), but it is interesting nonetheless.
FullerTron
When you once had a sports car that would do 0-60 in 3.7
one year later that same sports car is doing 0-60 in 5.2?
Sure, nice car. Looks are great, but somethings wrong.
Unlike a slight adjustment on a car. That much change in Velo
means most likely joint cartilage or tendons. DL High risk-
Don't show me the CARFAX, the Radar Gun speaks plenty.
HubZ
Joey, that's a very interesting article, thanks. Part of my ruminating on this was wondering if the Rangers look at a guy like Ubaldo and see something they can fix. IF (and that's a big if) Apodaca is correct, Ryan seems like the perfect guy to encourage Jimenez to let it loose again. I'm sure that would take time and there's a large chance it's not even the problem. We may never know.
t ball
MLB sources (Found this over at LSB) Source: Rangers & Tigers in lead to acquire Ubaldo Jimenez – Rangers are prepared to make offer this week (Yanks not in it)
Garrett
Martin = Retard
Ricky in Fort Worth
@Martin: Are you out of your mind? Or are you trolling?
Andy
As dozens of pitching target names get tossed around the blogosphere I've been wondering what it would take to get Ubaldo Jimenez. When I look at Ubaldo I see a poor man's Nolan Ryan. Power stuff, high K rates, but also high BB rates, low HR rates that minimize the BB damage. I wonder if Ryan looks at Ubaldo and sees a bit of himself, and a guy that the Rangers could squeeze a bit more out of.
He'd be costly. Besides pitching at a high level in a difficult home park, Jimenez is signed to a pretty team-friendly deal that puts him under club control through 2014 at a total cost of just over $1M the rest of this season and $17.75M from 2012-2014. That's a lot of value to trade for and I'm sure CO only deals him if they think they're getting a team-changing package back.