Valverde is Notorious Slow Starter

It was a nice first start for Max Scherzer tonight.  And Miguel Cabrera's at bat in the ninth was amazing.  Other than that, it was a lackluster performance by the Tigers and a really tough loss to a weak team.  It's late so I won't talk much about it.  However, I do want to bring up one point about Jose Valverde's blown save.  I was looking at his career monthly splits just now and was reminded that he is a slow starter (See table below).

His lifetime ERA in March/April is 4.30 in 52 1/3 innings.  In May, it's 5.00 in 63 innings.  His ERA then gets dramatically better by month - 3.86 in June, 2.23 in July, 2.13 in August and 1.52 in September/October.  The reason is his tendency to give up the gopher ball early in the year (as we saw tonight).  He has allowed 2.1 homers per nine innings (HR/9) in April.  In May and June, he has surrendered 1.3 and 1.5 HR/9.  In the final three months of the year, his rates have been 0.5, 0.6 and 0.3. 

So, as painful as it was to watch the finish of tonight's game, we can take solace in fact that things will likely get better for Valverde as the year goes along.  On the downside, we'll probably see a couple of more gopher balls at bad times before he starts to get rolling. 

Month	IP	ERA	HR/9
March/April	52 1/3	4.30	2.1
May	63	5.00	1.3
June	77	3.86	1.5
July	49 1/3	2.37	0.5
August	80 1/3	2.13	0.6
Sept./Oct.	65	1.52	0.3

Source: Baseball-Reference.com