Ubaldo Jimenez is the terrific young pitcher for the Colorado Rockies. Don Baylor is the Rockies’ veteran hitting coach. I asked Baylor what he would tell his hitters if they had to face Jimenez.

“Good luck,” Baylor said. Then he laughed.

Batters have found that hitting against Jimenez this season is no laughing matter. In fact, it has been virtually impossible. No one should have to do it.

Some things are just too ridiculous to try to understand or figure out. Jimenez, with his 10-1 record and infinitesimal 0.78 earned run average, provides a current case in point.

The 0.78 next to Ubaldo’s name is not from one start that Jimenez made for the Rockies. That 0.78 e.r.a.is from 11 starts, one-third of a starting pitcher’s season. Who has ever had a 0.78 e.r.a. after 11 starts?

I didn’t know if any pitcher had ever had such an outrageous e.r.a. a third into the season so I asked Elias Sports Bureau. The answer Elias found: Walter Johnson in 1913 had a 0,77 e,r,a, and a 12-2 record through May. In 1966 Juan Marichal had a 0.80 e.r.a. and a 10-0 record at that point in the season.

Jimenez, a 26-year-old native of the Dominican Republic, vividly stands out from the rest of the pitching pack. Compare his 0.78 e.r.a. to the collective 4.18 all of the other major league starters have. Compare his .172 opponents’ batting average to .261 for all of his fellow starters.

Indeed, Ubaldo is the dominant Dominican.

“Everybody will tell you no one deserves it more than Ubaldo,” Baylor said of the right-hander’s success. “He’s one of the most unassuming guys until he takes the mound. He’s quiet, he’s respectful to everybody. He’s a real shy kind of guy. He doesn’t let things get in the way.”

The Jimenez family, Baylor added, is a close family. “His mom has been in Denver all season. His father is there now. They have a close family. He has a girl friend.”

Signed by the Rockies when he was 17 years old, Jimenez was no secret member of the Rockies. He started five post-season games for them in 2007 and ‘09, including a World Series game against Boston in ‘07. He won a total of 27 games the past two seasons and lowered his earned run average each of the previous three seasons.

But according to Baylor his career exploded in spring training this year.

“In spring training,” Baylor related, “he threw a pitch that I don’t know where it came from. It was 95 miles per hour and took a left turn when it got to the plate. He discovered his ball could make some movement and that’s where he’s been. The bottom drops out of it.”

Not to suggest that Jimenez might be engaged in some chicanery, but that description sounds like the reaction of a scuffed or spit ball.

Baylor quickly rejected that possibility. “He wouldn’t be caught cheating,” he said. “He’s too good a competitor. I don’t think he would throw anything illegal.”

Pitches that pitchers throw off their fastballs – split-fingers and cut fastballs, for example – are not as fast as fastballs. Jimenez’s pitch, however, Baylor said, zooms to the plate often at 96 or 97 miles an hour.

“He throws it like a fastball but with a different grip from the four-seam fastball,” Baylor said. “It drops, but it’s 96, 97.” Sometimes, Baylor added, Miguel Olivo, his catcher, “doesn’t know where it’s going. He sits in the middle of the plate and hopes it doesn’t hit him.”

At the start of a game, Baylor said, Jimenez throws 97-mile-an-hour fastballs, and by the end he can be throwing 98 to 100. “He’s like Nolan that way,” Baylor said, referring to an old teammate named Ryan. “He steps on the gas in the seventh, eighth and ninth inning. He wants to get it over with.”

Jimenez doesn’t leave games too early. To him, a quality start isn’t six innings. It’s as close to nine innings as he can get. He has pitched at least six innings in each of his 11 starts and seven innings in each of his last six starts. He has pitched two complete games, one a no-hitter against Atlanta.

His only loss was a 2-0 decision to the Dodgers in which he gave up one run in seven innings. In all, Jimenez has allowed seven runs in 80 1/3 innings, “No one puts a big inning together against him,” Baylor said.

Opposing teams this season have also found it impossible to beat Jimenez when he has pitched following a Rockies loss. Jimenez has a 7-0 record in those situations. “He’s the stopper,” Baylor said. “He stops losing streaks.”

“He’s got a great delivery, a great body for it,” Baylor added of the 6-foot-4, 210-pound pitcher. “He’s a pitcher. He’s really improved. He has helped himself with the bat. He works on his bunting. He’s becoming a complete pitcher.”

But Jimenez hasn’t quite reached the point where he has excelled as a hitter. He has 3 hits in 31 times at bat for a .097 average. Come to think about it, that’s still higher than Ubaldo’s earned run average, and not many pitchers can say their batting average is higher than their earned run average.