September 16, 2016

Rubbing Mud

Pennant-Race Factor Ubaldo Jimenez

by Matthew Trueblood

There are 16 games left in the Orioles’ season, and Ubaldo Jimenez might start four of them. He’s on track to do so, beginning Friday night against the Rays. If you had told an Orioles fan two months ago that this would be the outlook of the team’s push for a playoff spot, they would have been stricken. Jimenez’s career is notable for a couple stretches of dominance amid prolonged periods of either inconsistency or outright failure. He’s never had a delivery conducive to good command. Once batters realize he no longer throws in the mid-to-upper 90s and is rarely around the strike zone, they often begin waiting him out, eagerly accepting walks unless and until he makes a mistake out over the plate. Going into the All-Star break, Jimenez had an ERA north of 7.00.

The Orioles tried to find a way to exile him to their bullpen—tried twice, arguably. Dylan Bundy made six very good starts, and has since had six very uneven ones, as he pushes far past his previous benchmarks for seasonal workload. Wade Miley, whose acquisition at the trade deadline really did precipitate Jimenez’s move to the bullpen in August, has an 8.41 ERA in his eight starts with the team. Thanks to a mixture of injury and implosion, the rotation has been fluid, but the Orioles proactively chose at least Miley, and arguably Bundy, over Jimenez.

That’s why it’s staggering that, in four starts over three weeks since being thrust back into the rotation, Jimenez is holding opponents to an OPS south of .500. He has a 2.83 ERA, 17 strikeouts, and six walks in 107 batters faced. He’s pitched at least six innings in all four outings. The starts were against the Nationals, Blue Jays, Rays, and Tigers, too, so there’s no dismissing it as a particularly soft patch and a small sample.

Jimenez has made real changes. His familiar, idiosyncratic delivery hasn’t changed in an especially marked way, but he seems to be repeating it better. He might be trading some momentum for a bit of control, both over his body and (by extension) over his pitches. Because he’s been less erratic and has executed his pitches better, he’s getting more swings on his splitter than he’s gotten in some time. He always gets plenty of whiffs on that pitch, because the movement on it is terrific. This small realignment, or change in rhythm, has allowed him to keep the pitch around the plate enough to get more swings, so he’s not walking batters and he’s getting more swings and misses.

He’s also set aside his four-seam fastball lately, favoring a cutter that still seems to be a work in progress, but also the overhand curveball that played an important complementary role in his arsenal back in 2009 and 2010, then mostly faded out of the picture. As a matter of fact, Jimenez has thrown 19 and 17 curves in his last two starts, more than he had thrown in any start since a random one in 2012, and before that, since his playoff start against the Phillies in 2009. Batters are hitting .167 against that curve since Jimenez returned to the rotation—in a minute sample, sure. But Jimenez seems not only to have tightened his command a bit, but found a pitch that can keep opponents from locking in on his primary sinker-splitter combination and induce some weak contact at the same time.

There’s no grand transformation here. The evidence suggests Jimenez has made some valuable evolutionary adjustments, shoring up weaknesses over the short term and giving himself a better chance to work in and out of trouble. The evidence does not suggest that the five miles per hour he’s lost on his fastball over the last several years are coming back. Better command has allowed his splitter and his slider to play up, and broadening his arsenal has slowed the pace at which opponents can adjust to his adjustments and push him back to the lab. Still, his next start could be the one in which bad, erratic Ubaldo Jimenez returns with a vengeance. The Orioles have to hope it isn’t. Right now, at this moment, he’s the viable mid-rotation starter they paid for in free agency three years ago, and if they can keep him at that level for a few weeks more, they’ve got a great shot at reaching the playoffs.

Matthew Trueblood is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @MATrueblood
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