The reason why people love great sports figures is because they are so dominate in their profession that no one can even come close to sniffing their level. Right now, there is one person like that in sports. That man is Ubaldo Jimenez. Let's break down some of his stats and put it into perspective for the month of June 1st.
ERA: 0.78- He has only given up seven runs in 11 starts. That is incredible, he has yet to give up three runs this season and Jimenez only twice against San Diego and Washington has he let in two runs. Other than that, nobody has been able to touch him, six of his starts have resulted in scoreless outings.
Hits Allowed: 46- If you take away his no-hitter performance against the Atlanta Braves, Jimenez is averaging 4.6 hits allowed in his stars. Not to mention, if you spread that out over his innings pitched, basically a team is lucky to get a runner on in an inning.
Walks: 26- Once again dividing that stat by 11, he is only walking a little over 2 batters. So to continue with the prior stat, Jimenez is roughly only allowing six batters to get on base. Somebody please explain to me how anyone will get a win against this guy?
Strikeouts: 70- I think one of the reasons Jimenez is so successful is because he is pitching to contact instead of mowing down batters. He has only one game against San Diego where he struck out 13 but he isn't getting up into the high numbers therefore shortening his pitch count allowing him to pitch deep into games.
Innings Pitched: 80.1- For you math majors out there, he is pitching over 7 innings a start, something that me as a Brewer fan would love to see every five days from one of our starter. Mix all of these basic stats together and you have a guy who is putting together arguably one of the best seasons in the last 25 years from a pitcher.
NOTE: I realize his advanced stats are off the charts as well but personally, I do not know enough about all of them to sound educated talking about them.
In my opinion, he is the MVP of the National League so far. Who else can you make an argument for? No one from the St. Louis Cardinals or the Philadelphia Phillies where most MVPs have come from in the last five years. Jimenez is the Cy Young and the MVP for the first part of the season but he needs to adjust as teams will start to figure him out. I think the sky is the limit for Jimenez and winning 25 plus games is not out of the question by any means.
-Charlie.
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