Ubaldo Needs More Steaks and Squats

Another guest post from our friend Mike Plude.

The Rockies are my favorite team to watch play besides my beloved Atlanta Braves.  They are filled with a ton of young talent.  Over the past couple years I got to see one of their recently former players, Ubaldo Jimenez, pitch many times (even a few times in person).  Ubaldo, though, has not been his normally dominating self this year.  There are a few telltale signs of continued decline that should have Indians’ fans worrying and Rockies’ fans sighing a breath of relief.  The picture in with this article has a lot to do with it. Ubaldo has never been a control pitcher with the lowest BB/9 of his career being 3.51 in 2009 meaning he gets by having FILTHY stuff.

Thus far in the 2011 season his stuff has gone from being FILTHY to filthy, moving him from an elite pitcher to an average pitcher. I started to notice towards the end of 2010, when he began declining, it seemed as if his fastball was regularly topping out at 96-97 mph instead of the dominating 98-100 mph he was displaying April through July.  This year it has been even more pronounced.  In 2009 and 2010 his average fastball speed was 96.1 mph.  Thus far in 2011 it has dropped to 93.5 mph.  The decreased velocity isn’t just with his fastball.  His slider has dropped from 86.6 mph in 2010 to 83.3 in 2011, his curveball from 78.6 to 76.7 and his change up from 87.7 to 86.3.  The slowing of a changeup can be a good thing, but the average difference in velocities between his fastball and change up went from 8.4 mph in 2010 to 7.2 mph this year.  He’s also throwing his change up almost 5% more and throwing his slider 2% less.  Not exactly a winning combination for a power pitcher.

My hypothesis as to why he has had such a sharp decline in velocity is a simple one:  he threw too much and didn’t have the body to support it. He threw 218 and 221.2 innings in 2009 and 2010 respectively.  Ubaldo is listed at 6-4, 210.  He must have hidden a batboy underneath his shirt when he stepped on the scale.  I always thought he looked skinny on TV, but seeing him in person he looked tiny.  He was the Rockies’ best pitcher and they needed to ride him in the always-tight NL West to have any chance of making the playoffs, so I can’t blame them for using him as much as they did. FanGraphs projects him to throw 195 innings this year.  And if he keeps pitching the way he is (4.2 innings 5 R, 4 ER in his last outing) he might throw even less.  The Indians should hope he keeps performing at a sub-par level this season to save his arm for next season. I personally think Ubaldo will have a comeback year next year once he gets some rest, eats some steak, and does a few more squats. But you never know with arms. We’ll have to wait and see.

– Mike Plude