On the Fantasy Alarm Show on SiriusXM, we did a segment back in early April called, “The Four Questions of Fantasy Baseball,” where we outlined things every fantasy owner should be asking him or herself on a regular basis. I said they should be treated like a mantra you should recite to yourself weekly, but suggested you start off monthly just to get into the habit. Well, a full month has passed by and judging by the emails and tweets I’ve received, it sounds like people need a refresher, so let’s bring them back and make sure everyone is doing their part.

Am I using the waiver wire properly?

This is probably the most important of the four, so I’ll lead with this. Every move you make should have a purpose. The primary function of the waiver wire is to help augment your roster in the wake of injuries. Everything else is personal choice. If you want to stream starters every week, that’s a choice you’ve made and unless you strike gold on a few of your newly-acquired hurlers and feel the need to keep them all year, you should rotate accordingly based on research and match-ups. If you want to pick up an injured player to stash them for the future, that’s your choice, but you should make sure you will have a positional need for him in the future and you are not dropping a productive player to do so. The same goes for potential call-ups.

All too often, people make haphazard waiver moves because they feel like if they don’t, they’re not playing the game right. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Again, every move should have a purpose. If someone dropped Zach Britton and you are thinking about picking him up to stash him, you better have a need for a closer AND you better have the bench/DL space to stash him. If you already have two closers on your team and are in the top half of the pack in saves, is this really a move you need to make? Even if you think you’ll have a surplus to trade down the road, is it worth sacrificing a bench spot? What if Britton doesn’t come back? What if, in order to stash him, you have to drop a perfectly productive player? How are you helping your team here?

It’s the same with those who believe there’s a revolving door that connects their team with the waiver wire and they just keep chasing yesterday’s numbers? You wouldn’t believe how many times I get questions asking if someone should drop a slumping player in order to pick up a Tommy Pham or Trey Mancini. Really? You want to drop Adam Jones to pick up Pham? Seriously? Do you even know who each player is? Did you look at history? Track record? Statistics? Anything? I’m sorry that Jones is batting .121 through 34 plate appearances in May, but do you really think this is a move you should be making? Even in a 10-team league this is a stupid move.

Stop making moves for the sake of making moves. Stop making moves without purpose. Not only are you doing your team a disservice, but you’re also making it ridiculously easy for your opposition. Either you’ll continue to drop productive players for them to pick up or you’ll just quit on the season because you’ve run your team into the ground with poor waiver choices. They don’t care which it is so long as they know come the second half of the season, you don’t matter.

Does everyone on my bench serve an actual purpose?

This goes hand-in-hand with the first question. You should be looking at your bench players almost daily to ensure that they have a purpose. If you have an injury, do you have someone on your bench you can immediately put in? Obviously this depends on the size of your bench, but you should always make sure you are properly covered in case of an injury. On the offensive front, I like to make sure I have at least one outfielder, one middle infielder and one corner infielder I can drop in if needed. For pitching, I like to have at least two starters I can move in and out of my lineup based on potential match-up needs. That covers a standard, five-player bench. More often than not, having those players means you don’t have to make a waiver claim unless it is absolutely necessary.

Stashing players for future use is fine, but only if you have the need. If you want to stash Yoan Moncada, that’s fine, but know that if you get hit with a rash of injuries and need to make appropriate moves, you need to let him go. In keeper leagues (not true dynasty leagues because in true dynasty formats you always have the bench space to stash), you should always have a win-now mentality with an eye on the future. If stashing a player is going to hurt the overall integrity of your roster and cause you to play short-handed, you run the risk of sacrificing the current year for future possibilities. Here in the beginning of May, calling it quits on the season means you have zero shot at advancing in your standings and with more than four months still to play, that seems like a rash decision. If that’s your decision, then fine, but your team better be absolute trash otherwise, you’re pulling the trigger too early and if you do that now, you’re going to do that again in the future and you run the risk of being that guy who perpetually looks for upside and will always be an annual donator in your league.

Which categories are easiest for me to move up in?

Counting stats are usually where you can find the easiest movement. If you’re down in strikeouts, you can bench your closers for some starters and build yourself back up. Same for wins. If you’re falling behind in saves, then maybe you drop one of your bench starters for someone on the wire who will help you in saves. If there is no one available, you need to explore the trade market and find out where on your team you have a surplus.

Keep in mind, if you look at a category – take RBI for example – and see you’re faltering but you have a number of quality offensive guys either hurt or slumping, you may not have to do anything except wait out the slump or injury. To use Adam Jones again, if he’s stinking up the joint right now, he’ll turn it back on soon enough and your RBI total will start to increase. Evaluating your roster properly is key when looking at what categories you can move up in. You don’t want to jump the gun if you don’t have to. Maybe you think you’ll have a surplus to trade later, but given the ebb and flow of this game, the peaks and valleys players move through, you need to understand that rarely does your entire team perform at optimal level all at once.

If you’re talking about ratios or batting average, keep in mind that now is the time to strike. If you wait too long, you could put your team into a hole it may not be able to crawl out from. You may have to sacrifice a couple of counting stats to make it happen, so be sure you’ve studied those categories as well. If you have a surplus of power, you can probably afford to take a temporary hit in order to fix your batting average. If you have a surplus of steals, maybe that’s the sacrifice. Again, it’s a lot easier to make up ground in counting categories than it is rate stats.

Study the standings, study your roster, evaluate each player’s current and expected performances and then make your decision. Waiver moves and trades should be calculated based on your team’s needs. Remember, you don’t need to win every category outright. If you play in a roto league, you just need to finish in the top third in most places. You’ll end up winning one or two, but you don’t have to win them all to win your league. In head-to-head, it’s a matter of building up your team so you win more categories than you lose. You can adjust for the season or you can adjust week-to-week, but remember that you don’t have to go 10-0 for each and every match-up. Adjust your team based on proper category movement.

Is this trade actually improving my team?

We all fall in love with players and are sometimes fooled into trading for someone whether we need them or not. Of course it would be nice to have Manny Machado as your third baseman, but if you already have Miguel Sano or Kyle Seager, do you really need Machado? We get so caught up in making deals and big names being thrown around that often times we lose sight of what our teams actually need. Trades based on names may work in a simple 10-teamer where half your league loses interest here in May, but for actual competitive leagues, it doesn’t work like that. You may be getting a big name, but if it doesn’t fit with what your team needs, then why are you doing it?

The same goes for trading from strength. If you lost Madison Bumgarner and Cole Hamels, why would you accept a deal that has you sending Max Scherzer for A.J. Pollock? You may think you’re boosting yourself in steals and runs, but is the ground you’re going to gain in those categories going to substantially outweigh what you’re now likely to lose in strikeouts, wins and probably your ratios? Now if you’re trading Scherzer to acquire Dallas Keuchel and Robbie Ray, well then that makes sense. That’s a deal you can make as it helps you with your loss of starters.

When a deal is presented to you, it’s imperative that you look at your roster immediately and see how the players coming back to you fit your team. Does the trade leave any holes in your roster? If you make the deal, would the players coming back to you be inserted into your starting lineup or would they end up serving as depth? If you trade a player away in the outfield and don’t receive an outfielder back, who would be your replacement outfielder? Does the player you are getting improve your roster enough to make up for that downgrade in the outfield?

It’s amazing how few people take the time to actually look at how their team is affected by a trade and then find themselves scrambling around to make another deal to make up for it. Which also brings up a great point – if you know you need to make a second deal after your first one, make sure that second deal is in place. It’s like playing poker. Always leave yourself an out. The last thing you want to do is make a deal you know requires another trade in order to accomplish a goal and not have it ready. There are no guarantees in this game, so best to have it established ahead of time.

And one final note on trading – unless you know a second deal needs to be made to accomplish something specific, let your trade marinate on your roster before doing anything else. You’d be surprised to see just how many people undo their first trade with a quick second one. If you make a deal to boost your starting pitching this week, don’t turn around and deal starting pitching next week. See how that first trade helps you before you make another move in the opposite direction. Traditionally, that takes more than just a week to evaluate.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few things here and there, but you all get the point, right? Think before you act? Study and evaluate your team before making any moves or trades? Look beyond the surface? I think you get it, or at least I hope you do.

And if you forget, have this page bookmarked so you can come back to it in a month. Again, I suggest you ask these questions weekly, but maybe that’s just me. To paraphrase Joe Dirt (I know, right? Losing a bit of credibility here), your fantasy team is a garden…dig it!