Thursday, March 8, 2012

Spring Training Hits & Misses: Game 5 vs. Kansas City

Hits

Drew Pomeranz

Make that back-to-back strong outings to start the spring for Pomeranz. In today's outing he threw three scoreless innings, allowing two hits, walking one, and striking out three. To break it down a little further, he forced three groundball outs, picked the speedy Lorenzo Cain off first, and teamed up with Ramon Hernandez to have another speedy runner, Mitch Maier, thrown out attempting to steal second.

Good stuff all the way around for Pomeranz individually, but that about covers the good for Colorado today.

Misses

Josh Outman

Outman's day was a miss, no doubt, but not the total miss it looked like it would be after his first inning. That first inning, which was the game's fourth inning, included the Royals plating four runs on five hits, with Yuniesky Betancourt's home run greeting him on just his second pitch. His second inning didn't start much better with a walk and single leading it off, but Outman did bear down at that point to retire six in a row.

Again, not a good outing, but you definitely take note of his ability to collect himself and finish his three innings of work strongly. How a pitcher finishes his outing after a rough start is one of the few things you can actually take away from these spring games, so I wouldn't say Outman harmed his chances of making the team based on this. But he definitely needs to bounce back with a more complete performance his next time out.

Plain and simple: Ubaldo Jimenez acted unprofessionally

The big story involving the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday centered around the article Tracy Ringolsby wrote for Fox Sports where we learned more details about the departure of Ubaldo Jimenez last July.

Among the new pieces of information revealed by Ubaldo Jimenez himself...

1. He felt disrespected when the Rockies chose to extend Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez and not him.

"I read in the paper that the Rockies said they were only going to sign two guys, they couldn't do three guys," Jimenez told FOXSports.com. "I was the third guy. They signed the two guys they were going to sign and they gave them more (years) and bigger (salaries). "

2. He arrived to spring training with the intention of being traded.

3. He forced himself to pitch through an infected cuticle on his thumb and a strained groin because "I was not going to get traded if I was on the disabled list."

4. He then continued to pitch with a fatigued arm for the Cleveland Indians after the trade.

Listen, I can completely understand why a person would feel slighted when overlooked for a promotion or an opportunity they felt they earned, especially if they felt like the employer wasn't doing a good enough job communicating their plans and his status directly. It's not fun. Most of us have been there ourselves or we've seen someone close to us being put in that position, so it's very easy to sympathize with that.