The game of baseball never ceases to amaze me. Just when you think you know what’s going on, it all turns around on you in a blink of an eye. Take the three late games from yesterday. I was sitting there writing up the Daily Bender with the Texas/Cleveland game on in the background, listening to poor Corey Kluber getting shellacked by the Rangers; by Rougned Odor in particular. By the time I finished, there was almost no mention of Yu Darvish, Kluber was being heralded as a champ for three scoreless frames to finish his outing and the Tribe smacked around closer Sam Dyson to win the game.

And that was supposed to be the pitcher’s duel of the night!

Meanwhile, after a spring filled with hope and promise, the return of King Felix was meh, Dallas Keuchel suddenly looked like an ace again and Kendall Graveman, who looked awful this spring managed to ruin everyone’s night who stacked against him on the DFS late slate. I literally just stared at the TV with my mouth agape as I watched the highlights on both ESPN and the MLB Network. That was some Opening Day, huh?

Now the fantasy game – much more simple. It’s all about sitting back and being patient at this point. It would be nice if all your guys got off on the right foot, but if they didn’t, it’s really no big deal. In a six-month long season, one day’s worth of games in the month of April don’t mean a thing. OK, for you head-to-head players, an outing like what you got from Masahiro Tanaka or Jon Gray isn’t helpful, but even this one match-up, this early in the season, isn’t going to ruin your year.

I cannot stress it enough; overreacting to the bad stuff is only going to get you into trouble. It’s like dominoes. You have bad outing, a blown save or a horrible day of hitting and you get aggravated and down about things. That causes you to look at the waiver wire and think about dropping a non-producer for a guy who had himself a nice day. Is that move really necessary?

Just this morning, I woke up and someone asked me if they should drop Joey Gallo and pick up Mark Reynolds. Both players are in relatively the same boat. Each guy is starting because of someone else’s injury. Each guy has tremendous power upside with the caveat of a lot of strikeouts and weak batting average. Both guys are going to lose playing time by the end of April. The only difference so far is that Reynolds had a great first game and Gallo didn’t. Is that a reason to make a move here?

Now you could say Reynolds has that bonus of Colorado and both Ian Desmond and David Dahl are expected to be out longer than Adrian Beltre, but is that enough? How about factoring in the possibility of Gallo moving to the outfield once Beltre returns? You see what I mean? You’re just spinning your wheels here and how much more aggravated are you going to be when tomorrow Gallo goes 3-for-4 with a home run and four RBI while Reynolds goes 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.

From there, the dominoes continue to fall. You’re now making moves you shouldn’t be making and you’re only getting more down on your team. The frustration builds and like sharks can sense blood in the water from miles away, your league-mates can already sense that you’re just ripe for the picking. I’ll tell you this – if you’ve said anything about how your team sucks right now, the first guy from your league to ask you to go out for a drink after work is no friend. He’s already putting together a series of trade offers to loot you of all your valuables. He’ll come at you like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, cite having both your best interests in mind and rob you blind. You may not see it at first because it’s so early in the season, but believe you me, he does not have your best interests in mind.

Stand strong. Trust in your draft. Give your players time to play and don’t make any rash decisions. Take a deep breath. It’s going to be all right.

Injury Update

On a positive note, the injury bug stayed relatively quiet these last two days. King Felix tweaked his groin while covering first base in the fourth inning, but he stayed in the game and says that he expects to make his next start. Junior Guerra strained his calf while bunting in the fourth inning and is being placed on the 10-day DL. Obviously that’s not how you want the season to start, but in all honesty, people. If losing Guerra is going to damage your fantasy team, you either play in a very deep NL-only league or you had the worst draft ever. This news shouldn’t be taken hard at all. Other than that, a couple of blisters for Kluber and Thor but nothing too troubling. Not like we're talking Rich Hill, right?

As for other guys to monitor, check in with our most recent Injury Report which came out this morning.

Today’s Action

Get ready for your third Opening Day. Yep. That rain-out of the White Sox/Tigers game gives us another Opening Day here and that’s not even thinking about all the home opener Opening Days we’re going to have to endure over the next 7-to-10 days. Enough ceremony. Just play ball, dammit. Make a note of today’s early start – 2:10pm ET – and get your lineups set.

As you may have guessed, I’m not one to micromanage and I am not going to sit here and tell you to take this guy out because of a bad match-up. Based on ADP numbers and ownership percentages, none of you are really looking at starting guys like Martin Perez, Tyler Anderson, Clayton Richard or even Patrick Corbin anyway. Again, if you’re in an AL or NL-only league, obviously that’s different, but even then, I’m not going to tell you not to start one of them. Let the boys play! You never know who will turn out a Graveman-like outing for their first of the season.

As for hitters, if you are able to make daily roster moves and are looking to swap guys in and out, at this point in time, my suggestion to look at things like place in the batting order, which can be found on our lineups page, and Batter vs Pitcher (BvP) data which is listed under our MLB Research Tools (under Research Tools in the main menu). A higher spot in the batting order usually means more at-bats. By season’s end, a leadoff hitter could see upwards of 150 more plate appearances than a guy batting in the bottom third of the order. At this point in the season, you may as well give yourself the greatest number of chances to have your hitters do something, right.

As far as BvP data goes, some subscribe to it while others do not. Me? I subscribe, but with one caveat. If a player has 25 or more plate appearances against a certain pitcher, then I’m buying into the numbers. Fewer than 25 and you run a risk as we all know about sample sizes and the phrase “regression to the mean.” Sort the data by at-bats and do your additional research from there. Remember, these are at-bats, so add in the number of walks in order to see if that plate appearance mark clears the minimum 25 I use.

From there, take a look at the rate stats, particularly wOBA. If you’re deciding between Player A and Player B to start at third base, you can certainly use these numbers to help guide you.

Remember, once we get through this first week, we’ll have a much better sense of statistical trends developing. We’ll cover the hot starts and the cold spells while also looking at how each hurler is throwing. We’ll see about pitch mixes, velocity, first-pitch strikes and all sort of fun stuff like that. In the meantime, get those lineups set for the day, be patient and if you need to be talked off a ledge, hit me up at howard@fantasyalarm.com.