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.

Those are some nice pictures but one thing to think about is that I'm about 90% sure that in this one:
http://www.deseretnews.com/images/article/contentimagetall/832951/832951.jpg

He's throwing a slider, and in this one:

http://static-l3.blogcritics.org/10/04/17/132879/jimenez.jpg

He's throwing a 4-seam fastball. Jimenez, like most pitchers, hides the ball behind his head and gets a large degree of wrist pronation when he throws his slider, that's where all the movement comes from. In addition to that difference, the stride is typically a little shorter on breaking pitches than on fastballs. In the picture with the Indians, you really cannot see his foot placement in relation to the rest of his body due to the angle the picture is taken. There is one picture from when he was with Rockies that is more head on, but it's tough to compare one picture that is head on and one picture that is at roughly a 45 degree angle.

Now, from that angle you can tell stride length, but there doesn't appear to be a huge difference between his stride lengths. The one in Cleveland is a little shorter, but again, that's not uncommon for breaking pitches vs. fastballs.

Follow through, that was another thing I was told to follow through with your legs, the longer you step the more you get on the ball because of the downhill side of the mound. At times I would short arm the ball and the coach would yell at me to follow through, push that front leg out there as far as you can and by doing that my arm would follow through and I would get more velocity and movement on the ball. It looks like Jimenez has used that windup and twisting his elbow behind his back for a while now and he has adjusted to where his arm is coming forward equally with his motion from his legs and body but it looked to me a few times with that twist of the elbow he was slow with his arm motion a few times, would be easier to see if they showed his motion in slow mo, and his arm is a little behind his forward motion with his body and that is when he is way out of the zone or in the dirt when his arm is trying to catch up with his body.

It might come down to working on different pitches to not put some much strain on his arm to compensate for loss of velocity, he doesn't have to throw 98 if he can spot the ball with movement. Maybe after the injury he might never throw up there around 98 as he once did but he can still be dominate pitcher at 95 to 96 mph with better location and better mechanics.