I was watching that game just sitting back with a beer laughing. He wasn't doing very well. Their park is definitely not a pitchers park, but still. We basically traded Two DUIs with unproven talent for a sober pitcher that seems to have Cy Young stuff on occasion with potential to get back to full form. And quite honestly I look forward to the days Jimenez pitches. Whether he is on or not, he is one of the most fun pitchers to watch in all of baseball because you have no idea what is coming next. He might throw a 12-6 curve with huge movement in for a strike, or he might throw a fastball 15 feet away from the plate. Ubaldo definitely gives a show.

Also nice to see a second starter finally get a W. Jimenez should have 2 wins and Masterson should easily have at least 1. Gomez should have 1 also, but that went to Asencio.

Yeah I saw that one. Still Pomeranz is getting his wrinkles out having never really pitched in the majors before. It'll be interesting to see how Ubaldo and Pomeranz compare statwise by the end of the season. Then there's always Alex White.

I hated the trade at the time it happened thinking Colorado dumped a player with issues onto us, but I'd definitely welcome a pleasant surprise!

If Ubaldo does underwhelm, it will be more great evidence of the incompetence of Shapiro & Co. cause anyone could have predicted him being subpar simply by checking out his stats on Fangraphs and reading the Rockies message boards. If my limited scout job based on 2 freely available online sources ends up being better than what a Major League ball club is able to produce, then I hope some people get fired.

I don't think the Rockies message board are exactly a source... look at this board it blows up whenever one thing goes wrong. People like to multiply the negatives as an excuse for why they are losing. Look St Derek Lowe. The Braves fans loved that move and wanted him gone just because he had a bad september. Lowe so far for us has two great outings, and has 2 wins.

Pomeranz is still young and has many chances to succeed. I have an interesting story to share with you all.

Last month, I was on vacation. Myself and my friends ran into some guys from Tennessee. Soon enough we were discussing the upcoming baseball season and one of the Tennessee guys says something along the lines of...

"You heard of Drew Pomeranz (who's also from Tennessee)? Him and his brother (Stuart - a minor league pitcher for Baltimore) were 'idiots' (in high school)."

He want on to talk about parties they were at and how Drew took new truck 'muddin' and it ended up getting stuck and buried in the mud and lost forever.

Now I know, it's high school. We all did dumb stuff when we were younger. And it's possible that he has matured. I know, I have no authentic way to verify this story, but I promise you all this is what those Tennessee guys told me.

Of course, Pomeranz may very well turn out to be a solid pitcher.

I really think White ends up in the bullpen. He has already dealt with a tough injury, one that derailed Adam Miller's career, and I just don't think he has the stuff to be a top of the rotation starter like many pegged him to be when he was coming up through our system. He probably could have been a good #3 or maybe #2 here in Cleveland, but if you want to be successful in Colorado you have to miss a ton of bats, and White just doesn't seem to do that when he's a starter.

Pomeranz, on the other hand, I think will be fine. I think he would have been an absolute stud had he stayed in a more pitcher-friendly park like Cleveland, so he'll probably be a guy that underperforms his true talent when you look at his ERA. Still though, he misses bats and he has dominating stuff. I think he'll be their ace for a while, though I don't think they'll ever see the kind of performance that Jimenez gave them from 08-10.

I agree 100%. The one Royals relief pitcher was throwing arround 100-101 mph and I didn't believe that for one minute. In my opinion the radar guns are totally over-rated at baseball games. Pitching is more about location and movement than how fast a pitch is.

Before we throw Ubaldo to the trash heap let's remember he had not pitched for 9 days prior to yesterday with the suspension, off days and the rain out. His command was good the first game, bad yesterday with the extended layoff. Let's see how he does when he is taking the ball every 5th day.

I dont know, that dude was blowing the fastball past Santana who usually kills fastballs. Even if it was a hot gun, I'd still think he's around 100.

I was watching the game yesterday before I had to leave on STO and I never saw a Jimenez pitch at 95-96 mph. I saw a lot of pitches at 91-92-93 mph and a lot of sliders or changeups at 82-83-84 mph. Maybe I am the one who is wrong but I only watched into the top of the 4th inning. The last thing I saw was Hafner's homerun. Our son and daughter were in the dinner theater at the high school yesterday afternoon.

His velocity was the highest I have seen since he came to the Indians which is good. Getting to 100 pitches by the 5th inning though is not good and he needs to work on his control. It won't help as much if he can't go out there and pitch 7 innings because all that does is bring the bullpen in too early. Bottom line, throw strikes and at least be around the plate not wide and in the dirt as much and he will be fine.

I missed most of the early parts of the game, started watching around the 4th inning. Ubaldo was around 100 pitches entering the 5th, and the entire 5th inning he was hitting 95 with ease, at least according to STO. And I believe I saw one or two 96's as well. Maybe he got stronger as the game went on. I believe the 5th was his quickest inning of the game.

Yeah, I remember thinking how maybe he should just pitch 100 pitches on top of his warm up pitches before the game every time.

As its already been stated many times, still too early to evaluate the trade. BTW , Jimenez and Pomeranz had almost identical pitching-stat lines sunday but Ubaldo was backed by 13 runs .

lol agree, but i gonna be watching his velocity again in that game vs Oak and hoping a better control of his pitches.

Exactly, totally agree. That's why i say.. the dude when miss the strike zone, he miss by much. If he can control his pitches a little bit, he gonna be fine. I have hope in him, and god knows how badly we need him.

exactly, that's my point. Maybe because of that he will need a little more time to be in good shape, in a real good shape to be the Ubaldo we know he can be.

I don't know if he ever will be able to go a couple games in a row without control problems the way he drops his arm behind his back like he does. That twisting sure looks like an injury waiting to happen but I hope he doesn't blow his arm out until he gets traded to someone else..... lol

The way he USED to throw looking like Tommy John or wrist surgery just waiting to happen. But he is nowhere near as aggressive as he used to be. But he doesn't have as an aggressive follow through like he used to. If you know about pitching you can tell from a few pictures what is wrong with him.

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/images/photos/001/638/641/125883608_crop_650x440.jpg?1333391263
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/si/2011/writers/cliff_corcoran/07/31/jimenez-trade/ubaldo.p1.jpg

http://www.deseretnews.com/images/article/contentimagetall/832951/832951.jpg
http://static-l3.blogcritics.org/10/04/17/132879/jimenez.jpg

The Rockies pictures are from his No Hitter in 2010. His form is not nearly that clean nor aggressive in the Indians pictures. His foot placement is off a little bit and it looks like he doesn't keep his back as straight with the follow through .

They said towards the end of last year the Indians were trying to work with him to change his delivery because they saw something they didn't like and he wasn't doing that until he got hurt. That hurts my arm just looking at how he turns that elbow behind him. I pitched for about 6 years from grade school into high school and the one thing I always got yelled at was when I would bring the ball behind my head or twist it behind my back putting pressure on my elbow something like Jimenez does. Coaches always told me I would blow out my elbow doing that plus they said when I did that I was losing speed and power off my fastball and if I tried to throw harder because of the arm going behind my back or head it would affect my control which is something I noticed Jimenez was having a lot of problems with the other day. There were a lot of players who didn't like digging in when I pitched because I would hit guys and the first thing the coach would tell me is quit twisting your elbow behind you. His elbow stills looks like it is taking a lot of strain maybe not as much as before but still pushing it.

To me, from those pictures it looks lime his step isn't as forward as it used to be in the Rockies picture, that would be part of the reason why his velocity is so much slower.

Aroldis Chapman has a somewhat similar middle section of his delivery.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Aroldis_Chapman_2010_(3).jpg/250px-Aroldis_Chapman_2010_(3).jpg

Notice how far his feet are apart, that's why he can consistantly throw 100 MPH. Ubaldo's isn't quite as far apart as it used to be. I don't know if they tried to shorten it because of his groin injury or what, but unless he gets back up to around 96-98 consistantly, he will never be the pitcher he was.