Matt Kremnitzer: Delving into Ubaldo Jimenez's revival

Surprised by the resurgence of Ubaldo Jimenez? Maybe you shouldn't be, considering the amount of unexpected productive performances from random Orioles these last few years. The 2015 season hasn't been any different. There are Jimmy Paredes, Chaz Roe, Nolan Reimold, Chris Parmelee, Tyler Wilson, and Mike Wright (temporarily, at least) - all have contributed in some way. But Jimenez has arguably been the best O's starting pitcher so far this season, which is hard to believe considering how awful he was last year.

Right now, Jimenez leads all O's starters not named Wilson or Kevin Gausman (who have made one start each) in multiple categories: strikeouts per nine innings, home runs allowed per nine innings, groundball rate and fielding independent pitching. He's also done the best job of limiting opposing batters' amount of contact. But his biggest improvement has been in the walks allowed department. After walking a horrendous 5.5 batters per nine innings last year, Jimenez has cut that nearly in half to 2.9. His previous career low in walks per nine innings came in 2009 (3.5).

So what is he doing differently? One significant change is that he's getting ahead in the count. His current first-pitch strike percentage is 60 percent, which would be a career high. His velocity has mostly stayed the same as last season, but the usage of his two fastballs continues to diverge. Since 2013, Jimenez has been using his sinker more and his four-seam fastball less. Early in his career, he threw a ton of sinkers, but he got away from that for a while. The most he's ever thrown his sinker is about 48 percent of the time, which he's currently doing. And he's using his four-seamer 12 percent of the time; that would be a career low.

Jimenez's sinker isn't as good of a groundball pitch as it was early in his career, but it's still pretty effective. His slider and splitter, which he throws 16-18 percent each, have also been pretty good groundball-inducing weapons.

Jimenez clearly relies on his sinker the most, but it's not the pitch he throws to generate strikeouts. And although he will elevate his four-seamer at times for a decent amount of swings and misses, his two best pitches in terms of whiffs per swing are his slider and splitter. Jimenez has been able to keep his splitter way below the middle of the strike zone this season, and it's been much more effective than in 2014 because he's getting ahead in the count, putting batters on the defensive. Overall, opposing batters have swung at nearly 59 percent of Jimenez's splitters (and whiffed about 20 percent of the time). The next closest offered-at pitch is his sinker (37 percent), with the slider generating swings and misses 13.5 percent of the time.

It's also worth noting the work that special assignment pitching coordinator Ramon Martinez did to seemingly repair Jimenez's delivery and mechanics in the spring. At the very least, Jimenez is looking more like the 2013 version of himself, which obviously intrigued the O's at the time.

If this is how Jimenez ends up pitching for the remaining two years on his contract, then his deal will end up being more than reasonable. He signed a four-year, $50 million contract before the 2014 season, but the Orioles clearly soured on him after that opening campaign. They shopped him in the offseason and would have been perfectly justified for swapping him with another team for another bad contract. But they didn't find a suitable deal, so he stayed in Baltimore.

Jimenez's reversal is a big reason why Gausman has been unable to crack the starting rotation. The O's may not have completely expected Jimenez to again be disastrous this season, but they likely didn't think he'd be this useful. After all, Jimenez's ineffectiveness along with his ankle injury enabled Gausman to start 20 games last year. It's far from unreasonable to believe that Jimenez could again be pitching out of the bullpen right now if not for an impressive string of starts to begin the season. Instead, the Orioles opted to use Gausman out of the bullpen to start the season in an effort to limit his innings. He then proceeded to get hurt, and now the O's are talking about the need for him to build his innings back up. Don't think about that too hard.

Having a surplus of decent starting pitching options should be viewed as a positive, but it's also confusing when a talented pitcher like Gausman can't earn consistent starts with the presence of other adequate but far from great starters. The O's decided against parting with Bud Norris or Wei-Yin Chen this past offseason, and it may have cost them a productive Gausman season (or more).

Looking beyond 2015, Jimenez, Chris Tillman and Miguel Gonzalez are still under contract, while Chen and Norris could walk in free agency. Gausman must be considered a lock for the rotation next year, and Wilson, Wright and Dylan Bundy will be rotation options as well, along with any potential free agent signing. As odd as it seems, Tillman has been such a disappointment that his future could be considered murkier than Jimenez's.

Matt Kremnitzer blogs about the Orioles at Camden Depot. Follow him on Twitter: @mattkremnitzer. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.