As of Wednesday February 19, Ubaldo Jimenez officially became a member of the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles signed him to a 4-year, $50 million contract. While he’s expected to perform near the top of the rotation for the duration of the contract, he’s already completed his toughest task, which was passing Baltimore’s physical exam*. The details of the contract aren’t that important (they can be found here), but at an average annual value of $12.5 million, at first glance this looks like a decent deal for the Orioles, especially if you’re last memory of Jimenez is the unhittable version of him from the 2013 All-Star break to the end of the season.
*I know the whole “passing a Baltimore Orioles physical” has been overdone this offseason, but I felt that it was my duty to make sure I had at least one joke in here about it. Although any joke probably wouldn’t top this tweet from former Orioles’ pitcher Jeremy Guthrie.
If you’ve been reading the different opinions about the Jimenez signing, you see a lot of the emphasis on how the signing affects the team’s playoff chances in 2014. This is important to talk about for a couple of reasons. One is that since Jimenez will be 30 years old during the 2014 season, there is a decent chance that the first year of his contract will be his best. Second, with all the recent talk of Baltimore’s current window of contention potentially closing in the next year or two (Hardy and Markakis are free agents after 2014, while Wieters and Davis will be free agents after 2015), it appears that productive seasons from Jimenez will be more valuable to the team’s success in his first 2 years than his last 2 years. There may be a bit of truth to both of these points, but I don’t necessarily want to focus only on 2014 in this post. Continue reading →
Orioles Proving Ground 