Don’t give up too early, but don’t hang on too long either

It’s that part of the fantasy baseball season where a lot of your draft day hopes are suffering as that guy you took a chance on in the early rounds struggles early or your ace starting pitcher has had three bad outings in a row.  But at the same time, you’re excited about some of your late round finds getting off to a hot start.  But here is the best advice anyone can give you about the first month of the season – don’t overreact to anything.

By all means you should be paying attention to who had the hot bat and what pitchers can’t be touched right now.  And you should definitely try to ride them while they are hot.  Riding the hot hand is a great strategy, provided you don’t get attached to certain players and fail to exchange them on the waiver wire for somebody else that can help you when their hot streak comes to an end.  I myself rode the Bryan LaHair hot streak early in the 2012 season and if any of you out there are wondering who Bryan LaHair is, that’s exactly my point.  Or one that only Cardinals fans will remember from 2003 – Bo Hart.  There are guys out there that for whatever reason, for one, two, maybe even three weeks out of a season will be unstoppable.  They’ll put up a couple of weeks where they bat at a .450 clip with double digit home runs.  Guys like that can carry your team for that time span, but then they’re inevitably going to go back to batting .220-.230 with below average power numbers. Once they cool off, don’t be convinced that some 31-year old success story coming out of nowhere is going to be the next breakout star.  If a guy has a successful track record of going on hot streaks, that’s a different story.  I”m talking about guys rising out of irrelevancy to shine for a couple of weeks at a time.  Drop guys like that when they cool off and find the next hot hand to ride or maybe buy low on somebody with a good track record that is having a slump.

For example, up until yesterday Chris Carter of the Astros was batting around .080 with no home runs.  He hit his first home run last night and got a couple of hits to up his average to .122, so maybe some owners in your leagues had already given up on Carter for the year.  But we know that Chris Carter is a proven 30-40 home run threat every year.  Last year, Carter batting just above .150 in April before going on to finish the year at .227 with 37 home runs.  We know that he is incredibly streaky and when he goes off, he will launch home runs in bunches even though he will strike out a lot and his batting average will reflect that by staying down around the .220-.230 range.  But with a guy like Carter with that kind of proven power, the lower batting average is an acceptable trade off, provided you don’t go overboard and pay too much for the guy.  But he is a guy carrying an incredibly low price tag right now after a very poor start to the season, but 2/4 with a homer off lefty J.A. Happ last night might indicate that Carter is about to become a usable fantasy player again as the cold streak may have ended for now.  He will undoubtedly have numerous hot and cold streaks throughout the season, but he is an example of a guy that you don’t want to give up on completely, lest you regret it when he finishes the year with almost 40 bombs like he did last year.  And there are several other guys in the same situation every year.  It can be tough to tell the difference between a one week wonder and a guy that could be the next Jose Bautista or Edwin Encarnacion.  Odds are, if it’s a guy you’ve heard about here and there and they start going off, maybe give them a little more slack.  However, if it’s a guy you are just now hearing about for the first time, getting a chance to play only because multiple guys got hurt ahead of him on the depth chart or because he’s on a last place team that’s just looking to find a placeholer until they can get somebody better down in their farm system big league ready, cut them loose once they cool off.  There is nothing to gain from hanging on to the Bryan LaHairs and the Bo Harts of the world past their expiration date.