Be Patient With Players in Early Season Slumps
by Lootmeister, RotoPicks.com
I've been playing this game a LONG time. Just when I think I've seen it all, a team owner will pull a rabbit out of a hat that looks more alien than a rabbit.
It's very common for many owners to be impatient at the beginning of the season. Even the most seasoned of fantasy baseball veterans will get trigger happy with players who are underperforming. These are golden opportunities for YOU, the patient fantasy team owner.
It's very common to see owners jockeying for position in the standings early in the season, dumping players who appear destined to have a bad season and putting in claims for red hot players. This is so wrong on many levels.
Today I saw what might quite possibly be the most bizarre move of all time. (This article written during the early 2013 MLB season). An owner had drafted Curtis Granderson who was injured, sat on him for almost a month and then wavived him, a few weeks ahead of the Grandyman coming back off the DL.
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I actually had to email my league commission to ask him if this was an error. He said no, it was real. I asked him why this guy would do such a thing. His reply was a belly laugh. That said it all. Some owner had gotten impatient and got trigger happy with what will surely go down as one of the most unintelligent transactions of all time. Sure, Granderson is 32 and probably on the back nine of his career, but coming off of a season where he blasted 43 homers, scored 102 runs, knocked in 106 and swiped 10 bags, it's pretty safe to say that this guy wasn't going to find anything on the free agent wire that was going to produce better pro-rated numbers than Grandyman.
What's even more compelling, is that the league I'm in has an injured reserve list.
I see similar moves all the time. Not so much with players like Grandy, but GOOD MLB players who start off slow, only to end up on the free agent wire because a novice team owner becomes impatient and claims some Johnny Come Lately that happens to have gotten lucky and whacked 5 or 6 homers early on in the season, never to be heard from come June and back down in the minors.
The point of this article is to advise you to be patient. Don't give up on a proven player who has a good track record. Slumps happen. Just look at Alex Rios's first half numbers compared to his second half numbers in 2012. More often than not, a player will return to his old form. Don't get trigger happy and dump him in favor of a player which is nothing more than a free agent gamble. This is especially true with players from the tropics. Early season MLB is full of cold weather. These guys don't perform as well until the weather heats up. Take this advice seriously. You'll be so glad that you did!
Another tidbit worth noting is that many team owners are going to be flustered with these struggling players and this is a GREAT time to make a trade for the struggling player. People make fortunes in the stock market by buying low and selling high. This method works in fantasy sports as well!
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