Ubaldo Jimenez – An Outlier Impostor?

If you had told this Colorado Rockies fan ten years ago that our team would have a pitcher who could possibly start the All-Star Game and then possibly win a Cy Young, then this fan would either say you were crazy from lack of oxygen or that the Rockies had moved to another city.  I don’t pretend that our team is the center of the baseball world; rather I know the Colorado Rockies are stuck in no man’s land.  We are neither East Coast nor West Coast.  Our team is rarely seen and our players simply don’t get the respect they deserve due to the Nintendo Ball that was played here in the 90s.  Why do I bother with such an introduction?

Well I think this explains the case of Ubaldo Jimenez.  On April 17, Jimenez became the first player in franchise history to throw a no-hitter.   Jimenez’s story was a feel good moment for the Colorado Rockies.  Jimenez is a nice kid, with a fast ball like no other, pitching for a team where pitchers go to die.  The media gave him his due and moved on to Braden’s perfect game.  But this was only the beginning and Jimenez has since then rattled off ten more wins.  At 13-1, he has done something only two other pitchers can claim to have done in MLB history.

Sometimes though I don’t think unknown early season player performances fit well with the baseball media establishment.  This was supposed to be the year Roy Halladay was going to sweep into the NL and blow batter’s away.  So then what tends to happen to these player performances?  Articles start to sprout up trying to tear down what they have done up to this point.  These articles claim that Jimenez is simply lucky, that it is all a smokescreen, and that eventually the stats will catch up and he will be revealed as an imposter.  That is the funny thing about stats, when the outlier shows up, the men behind the numbers rationalize away the beauty of baseball, and either discount the player or the situation.  The all telling models have become so complex that these outliers just shouldn’t exist.

It should be noted that this article is in no way a complaint about the new generation of stats.  I love them.  I love that the history of baseball is the statistical record.  What I don’t like is when stats are used to manipulate the reader into dismissing great performances.  What Jimenez has done to start 2010 has been simply amazing.  For comparison’s stake let’s look at how Jimenez’s stack up compared to 1968 Gibson’s season and 1986 Clemens’ season.

	IP	H	H / 9	R	BB	SO	K / BB	HR	BF	AB	2B	3B	GDP	BABIP
2010 Jimenez	101	65	5.8	13	36	88	2.4	3	385	344	18	2	14	0.245
1968 Gibson	124	77	5.6	23	28	92	3.3	5	473	434	9	0	7	0.213
1986 Clemens	115	75	5.9	30	29	114	3.9	11	450	420	15	0	3	0.217

Jimenez stats are pretty comparable to some great pitching performances.  In addition to above, batters are hitting 0.189 against Jimenez (Gibson at 0.177 and Clemens at 0.175).  Of the 385 batters Jimenez has faced only 56 have gotten to a full count.  He has faced 75 batters with runners in scoring position and they are batting 0.147.

The telling stat for the home team is that he has won 13 of the 36 Rockies victories and ten of wins have come after Rockies losses.  Regardless of any stat a pitcher’s job is to put his team in the position to win.  How the pitcher gets there is some crafty pitching, some luck, and timely hitting by your side.  Baseball is a long season and time will tell whether these numbers will hold up.  I think Jimenez will probably hit a rough patch in July and August.  The team behind him is in disarray.  Scoring runs has been the Rockies Achilles heel not to mention an on and off again bullpen.  His innings pitched has raised a few eyebrows for a player with less than 100 major league starts (compared to Gibson’s 300 starts in 1968 but only 50 starts for Clemens in 1986).  And finally tracking the running average through his 14 starts of batting average on balls in play (BABIP) suggest that, through ten games Jimenez was walking with Gods, he has since then started to regress to his mean.

Heralding a particular player at this point in the season as the greatest is a bit premature.  Although as a Rockies fan I am rooting for the franchise’s first 20-game winner!  Additionally if at this point in the season I needed one win, then Jimenez would be on the rubber.  His season so far stacks up pretty well with two of greats – Gibson and Clemens.