The Rockies got about as much out of starting pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez as they could have hoped for Saturday night in what turned out to be Colorado’s 2-1 victory in Game 3 of the National League division series.
Jimenez, a 23-year-old Dominican right-hander, went 6 1/3 innings and allowed only three hits and one run to the Phillies. It was startlingly similar to his one-hit performance last Sunday, also 6 1/3 innings, in a 4-3 victory over Arizona that got the Rockies into the wild-card tiebreaker game against San Diego.
Saturday night, manager Clint Hurdle went and got Jimenez, summoning in reliever Matt Herges, after Philadelphia right fielder Shane Victorino homered to tie the game 1-1 and catcher Carlos Ruiz followed with a single, both with one out in the top of the seventh.
For those who consider pitch counts the Holy Grail, Jimenez by then had thrown 92 pitches, walking four and striking out five. The home run was a major red flag, but so was the pitch Victorino hit – an 82 mph, hanging slider.
All along, the chances of Jimenez throwing a complete game were minuscule given the conventions of the modern game, the Rockies’ paucity of home complete games (they had only one in the 2007 regular season), and even Jimenez’s track record of throwing only three complete games in seven seasons in the Colorado organization since signing at age 17.
But after that pitch, Hurdle had seen enough – and was grateful to have seen Jimenez do so well in such a high-pressure situation. Until the seventh, the Phillies’ only hit was Ryan Howard’s two-out single in the first.
After Jimenez left, Herges retired consecutive pinch hitters to end the inning. Greg Dobbs grounded out to third, with Ruiz going to second, and Tadahito Iguchi popped out to shortstop Troy Tulowitzki.
That allowed the Rockies to escape the inning, enabling Jeff Baker’s RBI single in the eighth to produce the win, also after Phillies starter Jamie Moyer had departed.
“I didn’t think he could top last Sunday’s performance, and I think he did,” Hurdle said of Jimenez. “I mean, the kid’s out there pitching the game of his life, and it’s like he’s pitching against Whitey Ford. I mean, Jamie Moyer, how good was he tonight? … But Ubaldo wasn’t pitching against Jamie; he was pitching against the Phillies’ hitters. He kept making pitches. He only made one bad pitch, hung a slider to a good hitter, and Victorino hits it out, like good hitters do. And that was it.
“He’s fun to watch. Three hits? Six-plus innings? In front of that venue, a game of this meaning? I’m just so very proud of him.”
Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba said of Jimenez: “All of his pitches were working. Obviously, he wasn’t throwing that hard, like we’re used to seeing him, like 95 (mph), but his slider was a big thing tonight. He was keeping the ball down, got some movement in his fastball and we just tried to finish hitters with a slider. And the slider was there.”
Not that long ago, Jimenez might have had trouble relaxing in such situations.
“(He) seemed to be in a hurry, wanted to make things happen,” Hurdle had said Friday. “He has slowed the game down to his pace. It’s not a snail’s pace, but when he thinks things are getting a little bit away, he has found a way to regroup, tapping the dirt, whatever it might be, going out and making pitches.”
Jimenez said that “the first thing I had to do was to breathe. If you cannot breathe, you cannot do anything, so just breathe.”
On Saturday night, Jimenez breathed.
He didn’t hyperventilate.
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
