Before the season, I told Scott and Ted at Rockiescast (hey, look! It’s TedQuarters Giants insider Dailey McDailey) that Ubaldo Jimenez was my “sleeper” choice to win the NL Cy Young Award. I’m not sure why I would deem him a sleeper coming off an excellent season and pitching in front of what looked to be one of the best offenses in the National League.

After shutting down the Diamondbacks for eight innings last night, the Rockies’ ace can now boast a 9-1 record with a 0.88 ERA. He has thrown at least six innings in each of his starts and averaged over seven innings per start. He has yet to allow more than two runs in any start.

Jimenez almost certainly won’t finish the season with a sub-1.00 ERA. That’s ridiculous. And there’s some reason to believe he has been a little bit lucky this season, pitching to only a .226 batting average in balls on play, well lower than his .286 career line. But batters don’t often get hits off Jimenez because they don’t often hit the ball hard: He has yielded only a 14.4 percent line-drive rate and induced 54 percent groundballs.

He does that by throwing exceptionally fast. Jimenez’s average fastball comes in at 96.8 miles an hour, the hardest in baseball and 1.2 MPH faster than the next closest guys. In the ninth inning of his no-hitter against the Braves last month, he was still throwing 98 MPH fastballs with sharp sink despite being about 120 pitches deep. He mixes in a great changeup and some breaking stuff to dominate big-league hitters.

Jimenez may not be the best pitcher in baseball, but he’s close. And thanks mostly to his insane velocity, he is undoubtedly among the most exciting to watch. Oh, and he’s only 26 years old.

It’s a great time for young pitching in the NL West. Jimenez, Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw should combine for a slew of Cy Youngs by the time they’re through, and there’s a bunch of guys just a notch below. It makes for good baseball and something awesome to watch when the Mets have got you too upset or too excited to go to sleep.