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Underlying Reasons to Wait
June 1, 2012
Two months of the seasons are gone, and if you are sitting on a player like Cliff Lee, wondering when his first "W" is coming, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet!
It's way too early in the fantasy season to let panic set it, so use June to look at your underlying stats. For pitchers, if you're so inclined, go to FanGraphs.com or a number of other websites and look at stats like BABIP to see if your pitcher is really stinking it up or if he's just unlucky of late. If you're a more casual player, even looking at something simple like WHIP and K/9 will help. Using Cliff Lee as an example, his ERA is still solid, his strikeout rate is as high as ever, and his WHIP ratio is a very impressive 1.02. All three stats are significantly better than his career averages, so it's hardly the time to give up on Lee. Use the same logic with other pitchers and you'll know who to hang on to and who needs to go.
As for hitters, you need to allow time for the averages to play themselves out. If injury doesn't seem to be an issue, even stars like Pujols and Stanton can suffer through a bad month. For those of you with patience, that abysmal April turned into a marvelous May with Pujols finding his HR groove while Stanton put up near record-setting power numbers for a player his age.
Just like with pitchers, look at some underlying stats with the hitters. Is he still getting on base as expected? What about his BABIP? Is it lower than normal? If things like age, injury, etc. don't come into play and your hitter is slumping, hang in there and wait it out.
Need immediate help? Do the opposite - identify players that are overachieving on your squad and trade them for the underachievers. If you don't get too greedy, you can set yourself up for a climb in the standings before the All-Star Break arrives.
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