While We’re Waiting… Struggling starters, keeping McCoy and Cavs future
May 2, 2012Are you ready for another Browns QB controversy?
May 2, 2012The early-April Chicago rain gave way to fireworks, smoke and free passes from the Indians’ stirrup-wearing starter. After an hour delay, the White Sox played host to the Cleveland Indians who would go on to play one of their fundamentally worst games of the still-young 2012 season.
Errant pitches, botched grounders, dropped pop-ups and miscommunication on stolen base attempts totaled to what would be a 7-2 loss to the division foe.
Tribe starter Ubaldo Jiménez, going head to head with Chicago’s gangly lefty Chris Sale, was flanked by Manny Acta’s right-handed lineup; Aaron Cunningham in right field, Jason Donald manning third base and Lou Marson behind the plate with Carlos Santana getting his first start of the season at first base. While they would have enough of a test with the 6-foot-6-inch Sale’s 2-o’clock delivery which would follow 94-mile-per-hour fastballs with 79-mile-per-hour breaking balls, the Tribe infield would also have to contend with the smoke which would fester through the stadium following post-home run fireworks.
The first test would come when White Sox catcher AJ Pierzynski deposited a home run into the Indians’ bullpen after it would ricochet off of a row of empty right field seats. Home plate umpire Tim Timmons would call for a timeout after the US Cellular Field fireworks would result in a thick cloud of smoke that hung over the stadium like London fog. Jiménez and the Tribe infield would not be as lucky following a Gordon Beckham — Chicago’s ninth hitter whom Cleveland made look like Tony Gwynn — third-inning home run which splashed into the left field bleachers.
The solo shot, one of Beckham’s three hits on the evening, would serve to be the opening act for a circus of follies as Indians infield would drop multiple infield pop-ups — one of which the Indians would be fortunate enough to have ruled an out based on the infield fly rule — and botch a routine ground ball. Jiménez would allow multiple bases on balls, one to designated hitter Paul Konerko with the bases loaded. Pitching coach Scott Radinsky even got in on the fun, paying a mid-inning visit to his starting pitcher. Yakkity Sax and laugh tracks would have certainly been apropos.
Manny Acta, however, would not be humored.
“We just didn’t play good defense, period,” Acta said following the loss. “We didn’t catch a ball up in the air. We didn’t catch a ball on the ground. We didn’t cover the bases when we had to. Plain and simple, we can’t afford to play that type of defense with the offense that we have.”
Third baseman Jason Donald would call the outcome of the inning “unfortunate,” but the truth of the matter was that this was entirely self-inflicted. Even the outs that Jiménez would record during what was his shortest outing of the season (lasting four and two-thirds of an inning) were hit hard; Shelley Duncan made several nerve-racking outs in left field. Eight hits and six walks in less than five innings will not provide many wins for a team which hit their first home run in a 12-game span.
The offense we have, indeed.
Duncan, despite his blood pressure-raising play in left, showed why he started in place of the recently added Johnny Damon thanks to a 2-for-3 night with a double and a home run to center field. Second baseman Jason Kipnis also kept his recent hot streak alive, going 3-for-4 with a double, an RBI and a stolen base. Kipnis has hit safely in five straight games and is hitting .441 over his last nine contests, pulling himself within one RBI of team-leader Jack Hannahan (14).
A lot has been made of this current Indians club which needs to play fundamentally flawless baseball if they are to sustain their current level of play — they are presently tied for first place in the AL Central. The six walks allowed by Jiménez are high enough hurdles; the errors (even though the first dropped pop-up was scored a double by the liberal official scorers in Chicago) merely compound the issue.
While the early-game rain and mid-game smoke did the Wahoos no favors, the fact that only 54 of Jiménez’ 105 pitches fell for strikes — while the bullpen threw three-and-a-third scoreless innings — was easily the antagonist. Since his one-hit debut against Toronto earlier this season, Jiménez has struggled mightily with his control, forcing Acta to go to the bullpen a lot earlier than preferred. Said by many to be the key in the Tribe’s 2012 success, last year’s big trade acquisition is looking more and more like a gamble fallen short.
Josh Tomlin looks to get the Tribe back on track this evening. He is expected to be joined by Shin-Soo Choo, who has missed the last several games with an injury, as well as the team’s new addition in Johnny Damon.
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(Photo by David Banks/Getty Images)
28 Comments
Buster Olney tweeted this morning that Jimenez didn’t induce a swinging strike until after throwing 90 pitches. That is AWFUL. His control is horrible and his velocity is down. It may be time to send him down to the minors to work on getting his head straight. He’s borderline useless at this point.
If anybody in Cleveland actually cared about the Indians anymore, Ubaldo might be the 2nd most unpopular sports figure behind LeBron.
I couldn’t handle watching this game.
You could tell Ubaldo didn’t have his stuff out of the gate. The velocity was up around 94 early, but he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. You could tell by the third inning, he had either backed it down to finally work on his control (velocity down to 91) OR he was getting tired from trying so hard to play catch with the back stop. Yes, the defense let him down, but he wasn’t helping himself before or after those events. You can tell by the body language he is out of sorts. Just by looking at how he carried himself every time Marson visited the mound, his confidence is not there. They need to do something with this guy and they need it done soon.
My real question is, do we need to see any more out of this guy to call this trade garbage yet? I’ve been a staunch detractor of this move from the start, so I guess I am totally bias but; if you are trading away two of your best prospects (and best future trading chips) you better bet getting a sure thing in return. Ubaldo is not (has not been) that. Regardless of how Pomeranz and White perform, the value of this trade is looking worse each time the guy runs out to the mound.
Now, tell me I am crazy and throw some crazy sabermetrics in my face.
Shhhh…..people will be here soon to tell you about how Ubaldo is a top tier pitcher based on those same sabermetrics you speak ill of.
So far nothing I have seen (yes, watching a baseball game versus just compiling stats after the game will tell you the same if not more than SABR) tells me Jimenez was worth our top two pithcing prospects.
Ubaldo’s mechanics look like a grasshopper still trying to decide in mid-wind up which arm he’s going to throw the ball with. Last year they talked about straightening all that out but their only chance at this point might be to stop giving him any instructions, tell him to just put on a garter and breathe through his eyes.
No even the sabre guys will have a hard time defending him at this point. Bad defense aside, you have the three true outcomes, 6 walks, 2 home runs and only 1 strikeout. Ugly performance. Im beginning to wonder if the detractors had it right, that he’s got some kind of injury. This guy has averaged about 8.3 strikeouts per 9 innings in his career, this season he has 14 in 28.2 innings to go along with 20 walks. I dont know if its an injury or if its all between the ears, but something aint right.
Ubaldo’s peripherals are in the tank this year too. He has no friends.
poor poor Ubaldo
Ah, the classic shots at sabermetrics. As mgbode said, his peripherals suck, no one is defending his performance now. That doesn’t mean his numbers weren’t good for the 4 years before this one.
Which sabermetric measures how many wins his last four years of sabermetrics equates to in the future? Sorry, I am new to these statistics.
I refuse to call this trade garbage.
We’re a month into the season.
I don’t think anybody would tell you he’s a top tier pitcher. I’d more likely say that he’s a top of the rotation guy who can throw a lot of innings and often struggles with his command.
You can tell that by looking at his career numbers in those crazy, new fangled sabermetric stats called “walks” and “pitch count”.
I wonder if they tinkered with his mechanics too much. And thumbs up for the Bull Durham reference.
He has stunk as of late. No doubt about it. Pitchers, hitters, people do that. Sure, it might be injury, but that’s on the club to figure out imo.
Know who else has sucked? Albert Pujols. Think he ends the season with 0 HRs? I’m guessing no. Yet we’re all willing to throw the last four years of Ubaldo’s career, a career that has been remarkably consistent in terms of K and BB rates, in favor of one month of like 40 IPs. Personally, I’ll go with the larger sample size.
Guys struggle and have bad days, weeks, and months. That’s the game.
Small sample size vs large sample size, all true. I was only pointing out that right now even his peripherals are really bad, and something aint right. I hope he turns it around because we need him.
None. All any stat can do is tell you how they performed.
If you’ve done your homework, you may have some insight into which metrics are more effective to predict future performance. For pitchers, a few that are seen as such are K and BB rates as well as ground ball/line drive/fly ball percentages.
True that.
but we’re 1 full season plus 1 month this season of his velocity down and not pitching well. So it’s pretty fair to say there’s a sea of red flags even if you want to retain that glimmer of hope.
True, but even with decreased velocity last year he still posted peripherals (along with some other advanced stats) consistent with his high-velocity season. He just got hurt by a bad HR rate, a number that has a high variance from year to year.
That’s not to say his velocity loss isn’t a concern. He’s actually been down even more this year too. I’ve read a few interesting articles about how much/little dropped velocity can effect a pitcher. Seems it usually depends on the quality of their other pitches.
To me it’s just a matter of sample size. Imagine we were talking about Shelly Duncan. The pro-Duncanites say to you, “he had such a good September and he’s walked a lot this season and he has seemd to figure it out. There’s a lot of cause for optimism.” To which you might respond, “look at his mediocre stats over the last X years and consider why he has never been deemed a guy worthy of a starting position. And get that, he figured it out garbage out of here.”
I see the Ubaldo thing as the reverse. Just like there may be causes of optimism for Duncan, there are causes of concern for Ubaldo. But I’m going with his track record, a suprisinly consistent track record, over one bad month.
But as with all things, we shall see.
I’d also point out that Justin Masterson has had nearly as crummy a first month as Ubaldo. (Along with decreased velocity too.)
So are we ready to quit on him as well?
Its fairly Clevelander of people here to be angsty about an honestly stellar trade that cost the Indians ‘maybes’. Ubaldo Jiminez was a dominant pitcher hurling in one of, if not the most, hitter friendly parks in all of baseball. We gave up two prospects. Some other ‘high ranked Indians prospects’ include people like Aaron Laffey, Andy Marte, David Huff, etc, etc. Not to mention last I saw the prospects hadn’t done much of anything for Colorado yet, so I fail to see why there is so much grief.
The indians front office made an aggressive move to try and stay in contention with a team that by no rights had any means doing so last year. This year they’ve surprisingly found themselves able to contend again because of the Central (Centrlol) division’s weaknesses. Ubaldo Jiminez was one of the best pitchers in the league over the past few years, just like many people have pointed out other superstars like Pujols who are having slow starts on new teams. Im definately not someone who’s trying to just not be a nay-sayer here, but honestly the reactions of most Cleveland fans is a factor, and probably a very big one, into why our teams front offices are so trigger happy. The fans consistantly clamor for new coaches, new front offices, and sometimes even completely new teams, then when they get it they expect it to be the ‘last step needed’ to some championship, even though they weren’t close to begin with.
well as EyesAbove states below, his walks are up and he isn’t making it through the 5th on most outings.
thanks SABRmetrics for the obvious! 😉
I’m not yet ready to close the book on Jimenez, especially after what I saw in person against the Blue Jays. That’s possible for him, if he stops overthinking his pitching, and gets comfortable. But how to make that happen is the real difficulty.
I wasn’t talking about his performance this year.
My point was that he’s always walked a lot and thrown lots of pitches.
I was responding to your claim that people consider him a top tier pitcher. Personally, I do not lump him with Verlander and company. That was my point.
What you got against sabermetrics?
Your point is more clear now, got ya.
Personally I feel that most SABR analysts are just that..live and die by the numbers.
Too often people will read SABR only and miss half of what is going on with a player which you can see during a game.
SABR can’t see his mechanics are out of whack, can’t see the look on his face when he knows he doesn’t have his control over his velocity, can’t tell you what he said to his catcher each time they visited the mound, etc.
Plus just curious (because I really do not know); how many World Series have been won by GM’s relying on SABR stats? Really, not saying it sarcastically.
I would be intrigued by the total World Series rings accrued on each side of the fence to make the argument for or against the total usage of them.
Boston didn’t win a WS for an awfully long time until they hired Bill James (godfather of SABR)
That’s an awfully hard list to compile though. Almost all teams have a mix between SABR and non-SABR scouting because there is value in both. GMs job is to balance out what is important from each.
Some teams like the Giants use it less, some teams like Boston use it more. And then, some teams like the Cardinals have their own set of numbers they go by (LaRussa may be the true godfather of SABR as he’s kept his spreadsheets awfully quiet which he uses for a guide on his pitching changes, etc.)
There isn’t a club today that doesn’t use advanced stats. It really has been a revolution.
As for hard #s of WS winners, I’m not sure. The Red Sox were big proponents of advanced stats when they won their WSs. Problem is, nowadays it’s less a matter of yes/no and more a question of how the apply it and to what extent.
IMO, while Moneyball and Billy Beane brought sabermetrics to the popular consciousness, they both have done a disservice thanks to the way it’s been presented.
For example, just cause you value the stats doesn’t mean you discount the opinions of scouts. That’s something Moneyball (the movie especially) really blows out of proportions. Granted, you want some legit analysis from a scout and not “he doesn’t look like a baseball player”, but the belief that sabermetrics trumps or disdains scouting is just wrong. If a guy has bad mechanics, he has bad mechanics. If his velocity is down, that’s important. That needs to be known too.
Not ready to give up yet on Ubaldo, but man does he remind me of “Fausto” with his high pitch counts, propensity to fall behind in the count, and his once every four starts gem that screams ace. Very frustrating.
And why do The Tribe always play crap baseball against the White Sox?