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In first full season, Jimenez learns from success, failure

By Jack Etkin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 4, 2008 at 5:09 p.m.

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Ubaldo Jimenez on . . .

* Learning English

"I was really good at writing it and reading it. As time went on, I got better talking. To talk, it was something different, because you learn the grammar but it's not the same accent. So when I came to Casper (to play at Colorado's Rookie-level affiliate) in 2002, I heard an American talking. I couldn't like get it at first because they talk so fast."

* His first full season in the majors

"This year has been a learning experience, a learning curve. I went up. I went down. Up and down. But I just trying as much as I can the last month of the season . . . to make an adjustment and do like I did in July."

"I been in good times, and now I have really bad times, too. . . ." right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez says. "I feel I'm going to be much better next year, because I've been experiencing both sides of the coin."

Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

"I been in good times, and now I have really bad times, too. . . ." right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez says. "I feel I'm going to be much better next year, because I've been experiencing both sides of the coin."

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By Jack Etkin * Rocky Mountain News

After being gone a week, Ubaldo Jimenez had to stop at a supermarket Sunday night, not for milk or any other staple but for a more meaningful purchase.

He arrived here about 9 p.m. from San Diego with his Rockies teammates. There were a few hours left in his mother's 51st birthday. Seeing her son was going to be joy enough for Ramona Garcia, who is staying at Jimenez's apartment, but he showed up with a birthday cake, complete with candles shaped in the numbers 5 and 1.

"She was so happy," Jimenez said. "She gave me a hug. I bought a couple birthday cards and I wrote little things to her. She start crying. She got really emotional because she knows I didn't have a good game, and she probably thought I was going to be mad and I was tired because of the trip."

Jimenez, 24, helped his mother celebrate one day after a horrid start at San Diego, where, after three hitless innings, he imploded in the fourth, his first real clunker since late June.

What followed in July was a memorable, soaring stretch that lasted the entire month and spilled into August - seven sublime starts in which Jimenez went 6-1 with a 1.49 ERA. During the run, manager Clint Hurdle summed it up when he said, "He's growing up right before your eyes."

Inevitably, there was a dip, but until Saturday at San Diego, much of August, Hurdle said, had been about "learning how to go out and compete without his best stuff, improvising on the mound . . . staying away from the big inning or making the one big mistake with a lot of guys on base."

The Padres game - Jimenez was charged with six runs in the fourth, an inning he didn't escape in what became a 9-4 loss - was an unwelcome flashback to early in the season.

That's when Jimenez, who is 9- 12 with a 4.19 ERA and will try to rebound tonight against the Houston Astros at Coors Field, could be his own worst enemy, despite a formidable arsenal of pitches.

"I been in good times," Jimenez said, "and now I have really bad times, too. So I'm going to learn from each one. I feel I'm going to be much better next year, because I've been experiencing both sides of the coin, like they say."

That Jimenez used an idiom to describe his season isn't surprising. The fluency in English for the native of the Dominican Republic is the result of some not-so-gentle shoves by his parents.

"Even before I signed with the Rockies," Jimenez said, "my mom, my dad, they made me go to school to try to learn my English. I'm grateful to them for everything they have done for me. The way they raised me, they always wanted me to learn something new and to get educated."

Jimenez recalls being about 13 and his father, who also is named Ubaldo, accompanying him to school in San Cristobal, where the family lived, for English lessons on weekends after playing baseball.

About two years later, the plan changed. Jimenez and his sister, Leidys, who is 26 and his only sibling, rode a bus for about an hour to Santo Domingo on Saturdays to study English.

"I didn't want to," Jimenez said. "I had to go to baseball practice and (was) playing games. I went to the capital because the English (instruction) is much better. They had an American teacher.

"I was so tired after baseball, and we had to ride like an hour on the bus. I slept the whole way. (Leidys) was the one who wake me up."

Jimenez, who has worked 1672/3 innings in his first full season in the majors, is a power pitcher with a front-of-the-rotation repertoire. He's capable of throwing a 96- to 98-mph fastball, a slider that touches 90 mph, and can balance that hard stuff with a changeup and curveball that register in the 80-mph range.

"He is a delight to talk to," pitching coach Bob Apodaca said. "He quietly listens. He looks me in the eye. Very soft-spoken, but inside, I know what's churning in there, and I've always dangled the carrot in front of his face all year long.

"I've told him, 'There's going to be times where you're not going to like me because I'm going to push you. And I'm going to push you and push you, because I see greatness.' "

Jimenez listened when a similar vision was described by Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez, an icon in the Dominican. The two pitchers happened to meet in the weight room at Coors Field on June 22, the day after Jimenez held the Mets to two hits and one run in eight innings and beat New York and Martinez.

Soon after his conversation with Martinez, Jimenez was, in Apodaca's words, "All-Star caliber in July."

But lately, Jimenez's walks, which were greatly reduced during his hot streak, have risen.

"Right now, I think he's fallen back into a pattern he was doing early in the year," Apodaca said. "He's not as aggressive in the strike zone with his fastball."

Indeed, fastball command is what Hurdle said he hopes to see from Jimenez in the final month of the season. He could make as many as five starts, giving him ample opportunity to revisit his midsummer heights or to continue to struggle as he did in his last start.

"I hope to see a guy stay within his skill set," Hurdle said. "I hope to see a pitcher who knows his staple is his fastball command, first and foremost, and everything spins off that. He got away from his fastball early (against San Diego), felt he had a good breaking ball, kept throwing a breaking ball, and then, when he went to get a fastball, he overreached for it.

"So I saw a guy really get outside himself, and that's something that we fought and talked long and hard about early in the season. It's still a learning curve for him, but that being said, life's all about lessons. And lessons get harder when you don't learn them."