Andrew Stetka: Reflecting on Ubaldo Jimenez's strong start

The strongest start of the first five games of the season by an Orioles starter was turned in by the most unlikely of sources. Ubaldo Jimenez tossed an absolute gem of a game on Saturday night in a 7-1 win over the Blue Jays. He gave the Orioles everything they wanted. It's exactly the kind of performance they expected when they signed him to a big contract before last season. We've been watching Jimenez develop some new tendencies while on the mound since last September, and it seems to be working.

After being demoted to the bullpen late last summer, Jimenez came back in September and made two fairly strong starts. The first came against the Blue Jays on the night the O's happened to clinch the American League East. The second was a week later, against the Yankees in the Bronx. Both starts saw Jimenez pitch five innings and allow two runs before running his pitch count up into the 90s and departing. The Jimenez we saw on Saturday against Toronto was even better, but is it a preview of what's to come?

I've been telling anyone who will listen that the Orioles rotation has the potential to be better than it was last season. All of this should be taken with a grain of salt because it's such a small sample size, but just imagine the possibilities for a second. Many projected a bit of a step back for the unit as a whole, but that's with the thought that there would be mostly no contribution from Jimenez, just like last season. Jimenez can push the entire unit to a new level. If the Orioles won the AL East by 12 games last season without benefiting from Jimenez, imagine what they can do with him.

This, of course, is all very reliant on the other members of the rotation, plus the expected presence of Kevin Gausman. It's all a very small sample size, obviously, but the first starts from Wei-Yin Chen and Bud Norris did not go as planned. If Jimenez's production comes up, you'd have to somewhat expect the performance of someone else to go down. These ebbs and flows are part of what make baseball.

While the entire collection of arms in the rotation might not be ready to duplicate their 2014 output, a prolific Jimenez could provide something the Orioles long for. It's also something that he truly seems to want. Jimenez has received a lot of negative publicity over the last year, especially from the fan base. Many have questioned his motivation after receiving a big contract and having a flop of a season last year. Things seemed to have shifted for him since then.

Jimenez seemed to start this transition at the end of last season, even after being left off the postseason roster. He carried it into spring training, and even after allowing six runs in his first start, he said he felt great and that his location was on point. A day later, the O's hired former big league pitcher Ramon Martinez as a special assignment pitching instructor. Perhaps Martinez's special assignment was Jimenez, because it seems the work has been a success so far.

Again, it's a small sample size. It's a few spring training starts and one in the regular season, but it could be that Jimenez needed to hear a different voice like Martinez. I'm not going to be as bold as some by repeating the made-up term "CyBaldo" during the season, but it's important to remember that we are talking about a pitcher with a track record. Jimenez did finish third in National League Cy Young voting five seasons ago. He's been an All-Star, he's turned out productive seasons and he has the potential to be great, not just good. If Jimenez is starting to emulate his days as a member of the Rockies, or even trying to become Ramon's more famous brother, Pedro, I'm all for it.

Performances like Saturday night's are what the Orioles were hoping for when they dished out that contract. Now he'll get the chance to test himself against another strong AL East foe in Boston later this week.

Andrew Stetka blogs about the Orioles for Eutaw Street Report. Follow him on Twitter: @AStetka. 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.