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Indians pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez, left, talks with pitching coach Mickey Callaway and catcher Carlos Santana. The trust between Jimenez and Callaway started when the coach made two winter trips to the Dominican Republic to meet with Jimenez, and the pitcher has responded with a season that has the Tribe in contention for a wild-card playoff spot.

(Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- All Ubaldo Jimenez wanted to do was forget. When he went home to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic after last season, he unplugged for a month. No pitching, no running, no thoughts of his 9-17 season.

"The main thing on my mind was just forget, relax and start fresh," said Jimenez. "I wanted to forget. It was just a nightmare."

The Indians had acquired him on July 31, 2011 from Colorado to lead their rotation, and a year later he was one of the American League's worst pitchers. In going 9-17 with a 5.40 ERA in 31 starts, Jimenez led the league in losses and added a AL-high 16 wild pitches.

In Cleveland, after manager Terry Francona was hired following a 94-loss season, he and GM Chris Antonetti started hiring a coaching staff. Mickey Callaway, the Indians' minor-league pitching coordinator, was named pitching coach.

It was a tough decision because Francona liked Kirk Champion, minor-league pitching coordinator for the White Sox. What swung the job in Callaway's favor was his plan to salvage Jimenez's career. He'd put it together by watching hours of video.

Not only did the plan help earn Callaway the job, it earned him two trips to the Dominican last winter to get to know Jimenez, who was greeting his fourth pitching coach since the trade. That does not always make for great beginnings.

But in this case, the relationship that formed is one of the reasons the Indians hold one of the two AL wild-card spots and could make the postseason for the first time since 2007.

Cleveland Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway talks with pitcher Zach McAllister in the dugout during the Tribe's sweep of Houston over the weekend.

"The thing about Mickey is that he doesn't only have good advice to give you, he's also a good listener," said Jimenez. "That's a huge thing.

"When you have a pitching coach that is only telling you what to do and isn't listening, it's hard. Mickey has a lot of knowledge, but he also listens. He's always trying to find out what you think and how you feel you need to improve."

What Callaway found in Jimenez was a pitcher with a sharp mind for his craft, but who was still trying to figure out how to pitch and win without a 98 mph fastball. At that moment, Callaway's plan turned from video to real life.

"The plan changed when I started talking to him," said Callaway. "I let him have a lot of input on how we'd approach it and what he felt comfortable doing and we went from there. We had a plan going into spring training and adjusted to what he wanted to do and how he felt."

Here's how they decided to attack the problem of Jimenez's 2012 nightmare:

To shine a light on the darkness, Callaway said there would be no big changes in Jimenez's delivery, which at times can resemble one of those elaborate mousetraps from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

"When Mickey came to the Dominican, he told me he just wanted to be there for me," said Jimenez. "But he wasn't going to change anything. He just wanted to make me better. If I have bad mechanics, just try to be good with my bad mechanics."

Then came the all-out blitz to convince Jimenez that he could still win without short-circuiting the radar gun at Progressive Field. Jimenez regularly hit 98 mph with the Rockies in 2010, the year he won 19 games and started the All-Star game for the National League. The velocity was slipping when the Indians acquired him in 2011 for four players, including No.1 picks Drew Pomeranz and Alex White. It slipped even more in 2012.

"Since I got here, everyone was talking to me about velocity and trying to get back to who I was velocity-wise," said Jimenez.

Callaway had a different message: Don't sweat the velocity; with your movement and deception, 91-94 is plenty fast enough.

"I thought if we could just get Ubaldo in the strike zone and attacking hitters with the stuff he already had, that he would be good to go," said Callaway. "Watching his video during the off-season, I was saying, 'Man, his stuff is so good, all he has to do is get it over the plate.' "

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From a standpoint of pure heat, Callaway says Jimenez is a long way from a junk-baller.

"As far as (velocity) he's ranked (in the top five) over the last couple of years in the American League, but I don't think he looked at it quite that way," said Callaway. "He just looked at it like, 'I can't do what I used to do, so now I can't have the intent of throwing the fastball for a strike.' "

In spring training, they worked on speeding up Jimenez's delivery, standing taller and striding directly to the plate. It was a gradual process, something Callaway calls a "stair-step" approach.

Indians starter Justin Masterson, who struggled as well last year, watched Jimenez's progress.

"I know Mickey talked to a lot of the pitching coaches who had been here before him," said Masterson. "The sense was that there had been a lot of coaching going on here, especially with Ubaldo and myself, and I think he wanted to get to know the guys, build some trust and respect and work from there.

"With Ubaldo they were working, working and working. Then it was like, 'Let's take your hands off and let Ubaldo be Ubaldo.' You've seen him slowly work into being where he is now. That's a pretty thing to see."

Callaway said his goal is to get every pitcher to be his own coach. It's something he came to appreciate at the end of his 14-year career that included pitching 40 games in the big leagues with Tampa Bay, the Angels and Texas.

From 2005-07, Callaway pitched in Korea. In 2009, he pitched in Taiwan.

"I had to coach myself all those years," said Callaway, 38. "I had an interpreter, but I didn't really work with the pitching coaches. It was a good time for me to make my mechanical adjustments and do my prep work on how to approach hitters. I did that all on my own."

Callaway still might be pitching in the Far East, but he needed Tommy John surgery in 2008, and took a job as the head coach at Texas A&M International in Laredo, Texas, so he could complete his rehab, only to injure his right shoulder in Taiwan in 2009.

"It was time to be a coach," said Callaway, who worked his way up through the Indians' minor league system with stops at Class A Lake County in 2010 and Class A Kinston in 2011. Last year he was the minor-league pitching coordinator.

On Sept. 2, Masterson, the Indians' 14-game winner, went down with a strained left oblique. Since then Jimenez, who starts Tuesday against Chicago, is 3-0 with a 31 strikeouts, three walks and two earned runs allowed in 28 1/3 innings.

Ubaldo Jimenez, shown sending a pitch home against the Kansas City Royals, has gone 12-9 this season with a 3.39 earned-run average. He says pitching coach Mickey Callaway helped him realize he didn't need to throw 98 mph fastballs to be successful.

Jimenez (12-9, 3.39) is 5-5 since the All-Star break with a 1.77 ERA, 80 strikeouts and 23 walks in 11 starts covering 71 innings.

"Whether we have Masterson sidelined or not," said Francona, "when Ubaldo takes the ball right now, he has legitimate, top-of-the-league stuff."

Early in the season, at Callaway's suggestion, Jimenez threw two bullpen sessions between starts to help stabilize his delivery. He's no longer doing that, but in his last six or seven starts, Jimenez has been throwing nothing but fastballs in his bullpen sessions, and his velocity is increasing.

It has made Jimenez, in Francona's words, "a tough pitcher to draw a bead on."

Over the last couple of years, with Jimenez doubting his fastball, he wasn't throwing it for strikes because it was getting hit. It made him rely more and more on his breaking pitches, which in turn made it easier for hitters because they could ignore the fastball.

Now he's throwing his fastball and off-speed pitches for strikes.

In a twist of baseball economics -- some would call it Cleveland luck -- Jimenez is pitching his best just when it is getting time to leave. He can be a free agent at the end of the season with a $8 million mutual option for 2014. What that means is that either side can walk away from the deal.

Jimenez says he's not thinking about free agency. He's concentrating only on helping the Indians reach the postseason. So if this is his best and only shot as an Indian, what other choice is there but to sit back and enjoy?

As for the elusive 98 mph, Jimenez, 29, says it may not be lost forever.

"Right now I don't have the same velocity that I had in 2010," he said, "but I know once I rest and start over again, I'll probably have it again because my mechanics are pretty much the same and my arm feels really good."

If that should happen, a lot of it will be due to Jimenez and more than a little to Callaway.