Monday, May 31, 2010

The Greatness of Ubaldo Jiminez

If you're not a diehard baseball fan or fantasy baseball player, you probably don't know who Ubaldo Jiminez is. Well, you should. He's very likely the best best pitcher on the planet. And he pitches for the Colorado Rockies.

After shutting out the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park today, he improved to 10-1 with a hardly believable 0.78 ERA. He's given up 1 home run in more than 70 innings. He's been unhittable this year.

I tuned into the Giants-Rockies game today for two reasons: 1) the Red Sox weren't playing; 2) I wanted to see the match-up of Tim Lincecum and Jiminez. If you didn't know that Lincecum was the two-time reigning Cy Young award winner, you wouldn't have thought Lincecum was considered the better pitcher coming into the season.

But on May 31, 2010 (and for the 2010 season thus far), Jiminez was the best. He was absolutely wicked. His 26 outs: 9 Ks, 9 GBs, 8 FBs. He gave up only 4 hits, and walked 2 batters. He was awesome.

And yes, I realize he was dominating a below-average offense, who's best hitter might be a player recently promoted from AAA (Buster Posey), but he's dominating every lineup he's facing.

Will he finish the season with an ERA under 1.00? No. Will he only give up 3-4 homers all year? Not likely. But he's is pitching in a special zone right now, and it was really fun to watch on this Memorial Day.

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