The less than perfect Jose Valverde

Last season he was perfect. Not this season. The Tigers may be spending their off-season thinking about Jose Valverde allowing two runs in the 9th inning yesterday as the Indians (!) scored two to defeat the Tigers, 7-6. A sweep was within Detroit’s grasp but Valverde had little as the Indians picked up their seventh win in their last 30 games with three of them against the Tigers.

Here are Valverde’s numbers, this year and last:

Year	G	GF	Wgr	Lgr	SVOpp	SV	BSv	SV%	IR	IS	IS%
2011	75	70	2	4	49	49	0	100%	6	0	0%
2012	64	60	3	3	36	31	5	86%	4	2	50%
10 Yrs	578	482	26	30	308	273	35	89%	127	34	27%

 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 9/17/2012.

One area where we can see the difference in Valverde is in his lack of dominance against left-handed batters, particularly on pitches down in the hitting zone.

Last season, lefties hit .230 against Valverde and had a .687 OPS as he moved the ball all over the strike zone.

2011 Valverde against lefties:

In 2012, lefties have hit Valverde at a .266 pace with an .802 OPS.

2012 Valverde against lefties

Look how effective Valverde was in each zone last season compared to this season against lefties.

Zones	2011	2012
Up	.186 (311 pitches)	.160 (188 pitches)
Middle	.271 (210 pitches)	.275 (207 pitches)
Down	.228 (231 pitches)	.345 (187 pitches)

Here's the 2011 Valverde down in the zone against lefties:

Here's the 2012 Valverde down in the zone against lefties:

The difference is dramatic.

This brings all back to yesterday's performance:

All against lefties, all down in the zone, Valverde got one out, and allowed one single, one double, one triple, and one loss.