When should you start taking things seriously?

This is my ESPN Insider column for the week.

For some of us, it’s been an agonizing season so far, hasn’t it?

Last week, the following was posted on the message board here at RonShandler.com:

“After one week, Eric Thames (pictured) was doing well but Brandon Belt was a free agent. Seeing a chance for an upgrade, I picked up Belt for $36 of FAAB and dropped Thames. After a week of home runs, I put in a bid to get Thames back, but another team got him for $225. I feel like the Ubaldo Jimenez of fantasy baseball. I guess there’s always next year.”

My response to him: “That’s why I never look at the stats until May 1.”

After three decades of playing this game, I’ve learned not to take April stats very seriously. In fact, I consider the first few weeks as just an extension of spring training. There will become a point when the numbers have more meaning, but that point hasn’t come yet.

Some players hit their groove right away. Lucky them. More often, players are still trying to get the rust off. They are still trying to find their 6-month rhythm. The cold weather in northern cities does not help this process. And the rash of 10-day DL moves means the time it will take for players to find that rhythm is only growing longer. Of course, once those players start running on all pistons, they often bring the early surgers back to earth.

Still, it’s tough to see all those bad stats on our rosters.

I look at the ERAs of the core pitchers on my experts league teams and marvel at how bad they are. I own established arms like Rick Porcello (5.32 ERA), Masahiro Tanaka (6.00), Justin Verlander (6.04) and Kenta Maeda (8.05). Some fantasy leaguers might raise a red flag. I’m shrugging my shoulders.

Whenever this happens, I always think back to C.C. Sabathia in 2008. He was at the top of his game back then, but the season got off to an ignominious start. In his first four games, he gave up 27 runs in 18 innings, for an ERA of 13.50. He’d finish the season with an ERA of 2.70.

More recently, Clayton Kershaw stumbled at the beginning of 2015. He had a 5.84 ERA after two starts and was still weathering a 4.32 mark in late May. That hardly stopped him from wrapping up the season with a 2.13 ERA.

And I had to shake my head at all the hubbub about Edwin Encarnacion’s slow start this year. We have such short memories. Just two years ago, he came out of April with a .205 batting average and had just four home runs as late as May 8. He then proceeded to hit eight homers in the next eight games, and finished the year with 39 bombs and a .277 average. Patience, please.

In addition to not taking my players’ performances too seriously, neither do I look too closely at where my team is in the standings. I remember owning Encarnacion in 2015 and that mid-May power surge alone pushed my team from ninth place to fourth. It’s a long season.

Today I received this question: “Should I trade Manny Machado for Eugenio Suarez?” Really?

Fantasy leaguers as a whole seem to be more reactionary these days. I’m not sure whether that’s the influence of DFS, the continuing push for immediate gratification or the possibility that our short attention spans are preventing us from learning from history. But I have some proof that we are becoming less patient.

Ten years ago, I used to run regular weekly polls at BaseballHQ.com. Recently, I’ve begun to rerun some of the same topics at RonShandler.com. Respondents are demographically similar.

When do you start taking the standings seriously in order to start working your roster?

                                 2007    2017
                                 ----    ----
Immediately after Draft Day        9%     13%
Mid-April                          7      11
May 1                             33      39
May 15                            28      21
June 1                            18      10
After June 1                       5       6

In 2007, only 16% of respondents started taking the standings seriously in April. Ten years later, that has jumped to 24%. In 2007, 49% of fantasy leaguers began working their rosters by May 1; 51% after. Ten years later, that has shifted to 63% before, 37% after. It’s a significant shift.

Given the volatility in Major League rosters these days, perhaps this is a natural outgrowth. But that volatility lasts all year; it’s not contained to April.

Is there anything real that we can take from April performance? There are two things I do look at.

If a starting pitcher with an uneven career gets off to a particularly bad start, history shows that the road back is a rocky one. It’s not so much that they can’t turn around their performance; it’s more a factor that their team usually won’t give them the opportunity. I’d be far more worried about the stratospheric ERAs of pitchers like Matt Moore or Kevin Gausman that those of Verlander or Tanaka.

The other thing I do look at are the standings in my fantasy leagues on May 1. History has shown that 80% of the teams that win their league are already in one of the top four spots in the standings on May 1. It’s not impossible to make a comeback if you are outside the top four, but the odds are steeper.

Beyond that, sit tight. “Exercise excruciating patience” is what I always say. I typically use May 15 as the date when the dust has cleared enough to make some educated decisions. But don’t confuse the dust clearing with statistics stabilizing. The latter may not happen for a much longer period. By May, a pitcher’s strikeout rate may be close to stable, but a hitter’s batting average won’t stabilize until he’s notched more than 900 ABs! That’s why Zack Cozart’s .386 mark has about the same relevance as Jose Reyes’ .104.