Baltimore Orioles: Chris Davis, Ubaldo Jimenez Drop Braves
Jul 28, 2015; Baltimore, MD, USA; Baltimore Orioles pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez (31) throws a pitch in the second inning against the Atlanta Braves at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports
In an all-around effort by every element of the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday night, the O’s came away with a 7-3 win over the Atlanta Braves. Particularly powering the Orioles to victory were two homers by Chris Davis: a three-run shot in the first inning and a two-run blast in inning two. These were home runs number 23 and 24 on the season.
With two intentional walks in five plate appearances on Monday night, Davis saw his nine-game hitting streak come to an end. But over his past 11 games, Crush is 13-for-43 (.302) with five home runs and 13 RBIs. And his OBP over those games is .375.
As exciting as it was to see Chris Davis single-handedly beat the Braves with his two home runs, it is equally as good to see the sort of outing put up by Ubaldo Jimenez. He gave up two runs on four hits over seven innings. But all of that transpired in the first inning. In the next six innings he gave up three walks but was never really threatened.
When Ubaldo gets off to a difficult start as in the first inning – facing a total of eight batters, hitting one, yielding a homer, etc. – there is a mental tendency as a fan to think, “Here we go again.” But he made necessary adjustments and got better with his pitches as the game went along. And in the big picture of things, this is actually better and more encouraging for the future than seeing Jimenez simply walk into the game and dominate throughout. It demonstrates his increased ability to refine and tweak his mechanics on the fly.
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The Orioles are still well short of the halfway point of the Jimenez contract in Baltimore. Even as I still think it will feature up and down spells, there would appear to be a genuine education that has been accomplished here in this stint with the Birds. With his strange and expansive mechanics having now been brought into more compact control, there really is hope now that this can turn into a good long-term investment.
Jimenez’ effort builds upon that of Kevin Gausman from the previous game and the overall success of the rotation in the past 10 games. Here are the stats from the last two times through the current five-man rotation …
| Date | Opp. | Pitcher | Inn | ER |
| 7/28 | Atl | Jimenez | 7.0 | 2 |
| 7/27 | Atl | Gausman | 7.2 | 0 |
| 7/26 | TB | Chen | 5.1 | 2 |
| 7/25 | TB | Gonzalez | 7.2 | 1 |
| 7/24 | TB | Tillman | 7.0 | 1 |
| 7/23 | NYY | Jimenez | 2.1 | 7 |
| 7/22 | NYY | Gausman | 6.0 | 4 |
| 7/21 | NYY | Chen | 6.1 | 3 |
| 7/19 | Det | Gonzalez | 5.0 | 2 |
| 7/18 | Det | Tillman | 8.0 | 0 |
So, over the last 10 starts, there has been one disaster, one poor outing, two decent efforts, and six good starts. If you take out the one terrible start by Jimenez against the Yankees, the combined ERA of the other nine games is 2.67. This is very acceptable, and with any offence at all, along with the very good bullpen the O’s have, and this should translate into a decent record. They were 6-4 in these games, outscoring opponents 40-29.