Do we like the Twins tommorow @ +105 vs Ubaldo Jimenez?

[Polaroid]

That's probably the most difficult thing to handicap in baseball or really any sport for that matter - a new prospect.

This is true, and actually relevant in Ubaldo's case - in AAA he had an ERA of 5.85 over the space of 2 years and 180+ innings. He certainly was no stud.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

The HR/FB ratio being down to luck has nothing to do with being a ground ball pitcher - it's not the amount of home runs allowed, it's the ratio of home runs to flyballs. If the ratio is 10% then 1 in 10 of all flyballs will end up being home runs - currently only 1 in 25 of Ubaldos flyballs are leaving the park and this simply won't continue. Similarly with his BABIP - it is a random statistic which I presume is normally distributed and should revert closer to the MLB mean of .300.

As to his ERA for the rest of this season, the best estimate is that it will equal his current xFIP which was 3.61 going into today's game (and probably increased after today's outing). The ZiPS model predicts a 3.74 ERA for the rest of the season to give him a season end record of 22-7 with a 2.64 ERA.

You're misconstruing what I'm saying. I wasn't saying that his HR/FB ration was a factor of him being a groundball pitcher. Quite the opposite. In fact, I said his HR numbers will certainly increase. His BAbip can certainly be attributed to his high frequency of ground balls. It won't revert close to the mean when he is far above league average for ground ball percentage and far below the league for fly ball percentage. His FIP is misleading and is simply a product of his low HR numbers currently as it is highly dependent on that statistic.

 

[Tron]

Not even a close game

COL 5-1


Some sparkly WHIPS heading into late June:

Ubaldo 1.00

Josh Johnson 1.00

Matt Cain 1.02

Halladay 1.06


Strasburg 0.89 (12 IP)