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Many pitchers get off to poor starts. Many pitchers have a bad three or four consecutive starts. Everything is exacerbated during the first month of the season.
But, there are some troubling signs during his first three starts. Most are fixable. His strikeout rate is the lowest of his career, while his walk rate is the highest. Usually a ground ball machine— As a result, his fly ball rate after his three starts stands at That helps explain the four home runs allowed. For his career, he has generated swings and misses with pitches in the strike zone This season, batters have been successful an obscene 93 percent of the time when Jimenez throws a strike.
Sure, you could look at the. Toss in the diminished velocity to start the season and the first three starts are quite alarming. Through three starts, Jimenez is averaging That is down from His velocity was actually down from In fact, unless Jimenez regains that one mile per hour of velocity, this will mark the fourth consecutive season with decreased velocity.
In each game this season, he has been quite consistent in the strike zone. The problem is that it is the wrong part of the strike zone. As the graphic shows, when Jimenez pitches to the lower part of the zone, he is still quite effective. But, the majority of his pitches have been right in that middle part of the strike zone. And, even when not in that middle part of the strike zone, Jimenez has pitched up in the strike zone. A pitcher averaging 90 MPH and who is supposed to have some sink on his fastball will never be successful pitching this way.
It is also quite easy to see that Jimenez not only gets hit hard in that area, but is struggling to pitch lower in the strike zone.
By comparison, the version of Jimenez was more adept at pitching lower in the strike zone and at avoiding the middle of the plate. But, what is the cause of this? Perhaps it is poor mechanics.
Jimenez does have a delivery that is based somewhat on timing, given his pause before delivering to the plate. During his last start against the Blue Jays, his release point was a bit inconsistent as the graph below indicates.
Jimenez does have some small variations. His WHIP is down to 1. Despite this, his ERA went from 4. If he has righted is stuff as the stats would indicate, he should be back to racking up the wins. To note one more thing, in his last game versus the Marlins, he allowed four earned runs in 5. He has been lights out on the road all season, and this was his first bad outing outside of Coors Field. His ERA was naturally going to inflate at home, but if he struggles on the road, then it's not going to get better.
He's still in the top three or four pitchers in baseball this year, there's no question about that. But I think we can see that he's fallen from the pedestal that he was placed on. That's not bad necessarily, it was going to happen eventually. Perhaps now we can just watch him pitch instead of pushing him to hit 25 or 30 wins. During his last start against the Blue Jays, his release point was a bit inconsistent as the graph below indicates. Jimenez does have some small variations. Even with the release point variations, it comes down to the types of strikes Jimenez is throwing.
Against the Blue Jays, far too many were in the middle of the plate. Because he was generally in the middle of strike zone or higher, it allowed for batters to lay off any pitches diving down in the zone. Most of the low pitches where taken for balls rather than swung at. Right now, batters are sitting on fastballs or pitches thrown in the middle of the zone because that is all Jimenez is throwing.
All signs point to a delivery problem. With an inconsistent delivery, Jimenez is pitching too high in the strike zone. But, there also looks to be one last issue that could explain all of this. The other two came in the third inning.
Both were home runs. Against the Yankees, he once again pitched two scoreless innings before allowing runs in the third, fourth, and fifth. Against the Toronto, he did allow a home run in the first inning to Colby Rasmus, but pitched well before getting hit hard in the 6th inning. That could point to some poor conditioning. One can believe that he was working out, but there is a difference when there is no team holding you accountable.
Perhaps that was the reason for his poor start. Last season, his turnaround was generally credited to the work Cleveland Indians Pitching Coach Mickey Callaway did with him during the offseason. Callaway frequently visited Jimenez in the Dominican Republic. Even Manager Terry Francona went a couple of times. Jimenez is the type of pitcher who needs constant monitoring of his mechanics. It worked last season. This winter, Jimenez waited for a team to sign him. With no team, there were no supervised offseason workouts.
His mechanics are far worse. The upside is that all of this can be improved.
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