'I've always been a slow starter'

I got snarky about Jacque Jones' chances at Twins training camp in Monday's print column: " ... this tryout is likely the baseball equivalent of a pity date."

Jones, of course, is more optimistic — he has to be. From an MLB.com story last week:

"I don't know what happened, other than I've always been a slow starter. If I had hit .210 the year before and .220 the year before that, I would have been able to accept it and say 'OK, I can't play. I can't do it.' But it was weird -- nine straight years in the big leagues of putting up some decent numbers, and one bad month and now I can't play anymore."

The "I've always been a slow starter" line is a time-honored veterans excuse and often of dubious accuracy. This is one of those cases.

According to Baseball Reference.com's monthly splits, March/April has hardly been unkind to Jones over the course of his career: .287/.341/.450. Those slash lines are all above his career marks.