The Colorado Rockies have been awful this year. For example: Jamie Moyer was the team's most reliable starting pitcher for a good chunk of the season. After they ditched Moyer, Jeff Francis came back for the lamest return-of-the-prodigal-son ever (he gave up eight earned runs in less than four innings in his first start last week).
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the Rockies suck. They can't pitch and the manager likes to interview himself. That's it, end of story. Except that apparently isn't the end of the story, at least as far as one Denver Post columnist is concerned. According to Adrian Dater, the Rockies suck because karma is punishing them for trading Ubaldo Jimenez last year.
From the article:
Yeah, Ubaldo signed his deal when he did. And, yeah, he should not have whined about what he made, or what anybody else around him made. But that's beside the point in this: The Rockies totally disgraced the game by trotting him out to the mound on that July 30 day in San Diego, making him pitch the first inning after the team [sic] had been agreed to.
[...]
The Rockies lost five in a row right after the Ubaldo deal, and have been pretty much awful since (24-35 this season and 14 games back in the NL West). Karma has a way of doing that.
God. Dammit. It's one thing to believe that baseball is governed by some set of karmic rules that determine who shall be cursed who shall rise to victory, but don't tell me that whatever Baseball Gods who write those rules give two shits about Ubaldo Fucking Jimenez. Believe in karma all you want, but this is like claiming that you can be reincarnated as a cockroach for forgetting to put the seat down one time.
The article goes on to demonstrate how the Jimenez trade has crippled the Rockies from a more concrete, empirical standpoint:
How has that deal worked out since? The Rockies stink, and pitching is the primary reason. They were five games under .500 at the time of the Ubaldo deal, and finished 2011 with a 73-89 record. And Ubaldo? He's 6-4 for an Indians team a half-game out of first place in the American League Central.
Ubaldo Jimenez has accumulated -0.1 WAR for the Cleveland Indians this season.
Rockies' karma not the same since trading Ubaldo Jimenez to Cleveland [The Denver Post]