Every year without fail, it seems as though there is a great deal of hysteria early in the fantasy baseball season that leads to mass amounts of knee jerk transactions being made.  There are those owners out there that will make over-reaction transactions that make for amazing message board fodder later in the season.  What you as a fantasy owner need to remember is that the season is not the Kentucky Derby, it’s the NYC marathon.  Do not over react and start add/dropping or making trades like a mad-man.  You need to trust your draft picks.  You chose those guys for a reason so if the only reason you are considering ditching a player is because they are not putting up the numbers yet, take a deep breath and relax.  Most of you know this, but sometimes people need a reminder.

NEWS FLASH: Emilio Bonifacio is not going to hit .392 this season, and Mark Buehrle is not going to win the AL Cy Young.  On the flip side, Miguel Cabrera is not going to hit .225 and Cliff Lee won’t have an ERA of 5.50.

In addition to realizing stars haven’t turned in to busts, and bad players haven’t turned into immortals, the third part of the equation to remember in the early going is that it is very rare to catch lightning in a bottle.  Yes a couple of years ago a lot of fantasy owners stumbled in to a mountain of gold on their free agent list by adding Mike Trout, but more often than not an unproven player will not become a mega-star worth dropping a drafted proven player for.

If you follow these tips you will get through the start of your fantasy baseball season while avoiding chaos, and knee-jerk bad decisions based on small samples:

TIPS ON HOW TO NOT OVER REACT EARLY IN THE SEASON

1 – Your star players haven’t forgotten how to play or lost their ability, the numbers will come.

2 – That shiny new prospect you want to add and stash will 95% of the time not do anything impactful for your fantasy team this season, if ever.

3 – An average to below-average veteran who is lighting up the stat boards didn’t all of a sudden “figure it out”, they will come crashing down to Earth.

4 – Don’t trade this early, anyone who is trying to trade for one of your guys is likely harping on your emotions over an under-performing player and trying to buy low from you.

The key is to remember how long the season is and to let your roster show you what it needs before you start tearing it apart.  It’s a long way to the playoffs, and there is no need to over react this early.

I will be writing weekly articles evaluating individual players based on their season performance to date and my estimation on their value going forward so keep checking in, and you can always find me on twitter @JohnnyCrashMLB, I’ll answer any and all fantasy baseball questions and I love a good debate. Let’s push the sun back up in to the sky once again for another great baseball season!