Collette Calls: May Day!

It was a rough month of April for many notable names around the league. A quick look at the "leaderboard" for the month of April shows these hitters and pitchers with front row seats on the struggle bus (all stats from games through April 30th):

• Nolan Jones: .170/.243/.277 with one homer and a 36 percent strikeout rate
• Nick Castellanos: .173/.242/.218 with one homer and a 23 percent strikeout rate
• Randy Arozarena: .148/.227/.250 with three homers and a 29 percent strikeout rate
• Corbin Carroll: .191/.294/.236 with one homer and a 18 percent strikeout rate
• Joe Musgrove: 3-3, but with a 6.94 ERA, a 1.66 WHIP and a 9 percent K-BB%
• Chris Bassitt: 2-4 with a 5.64 ERA, a 1.85 WHIP and a 9 percent K-BB%
• Mitch Keller: 2-2 with a 5.14 ERA, a 1.49 WHIP and a 12 percent K-BB%
• Michael King: 2-3 with a 5.00 ERA, a 1.47 WHIP and a 12 percent K-BB%

None of those names made it to the 14th round of RotoWire Online Championship drafts this past draft season and were taken anywhere from sixth overall (Carroll) to 162nd (Bassitt). It is getting tougher by the day to carry some of these guys on rosters with these anemic performances while watching lesser draft picks such as Ranger Suarez, Kutter Crawford, Spencer Turnbull or Reynaldo Lopez deal from the mound and while watching  Jurickson Profar, Mark Canha, Josh Smith and Ryan Jeffers excel at the plate. 

Any fantasy manager who has been playing fantasy baseball for a while knows this is a story as old as time, as we have seen many players get off to red-hot or ice-cold starts only to turn their seasons around after we acquired or cut said player. The best example of this for me is Edwin Encarnacion, long one of my favorite players. Encarnacion hit 424 homers in his career along with a .260 batting average but was a notorious slow starter:

Encarnacion simply took a while to warm up and would struggle the first month of nearly ever season and then explode as the weather warmed up. He hit 38 homers while hitting .266 in 2017, but he started that season with four homers and a .200 batting average in April. He hit 32 homers while hitting .246 in 2018, but that season began with him hitting .160 with six homers in April. If you're looking at players on your roster who are frustrating you and you're considering cutting them, you can think back to the days of Encarnacion walking the parrot around the bases on a home run trot and think better of it. You can also look all the way back to last year and find players who had terrible Aprils but then went on to have solid to terrific seasons the rest of the way. Below are four batters and four pitchers who did just that. These players closed so well that you have likely forgotten just how dreadful they were in April of 2023.

Triston Casas

That was a painful cut for those who dropped Casas after last April, as he went on to do rather well in the average and power department the rest of the season. The old adage says, "if you're walking, you're hitting," but that 17.4 percent walk rate wasn't translating over into his BABIP, which was sinking his batting average. Once that situation righted itself, Casas took off, and it's unfortunate we're now missing him this season for an extended period of time with a rib fracture.

Gunnar Henderson

The difference between Henderson last year and Jackson Holliday this year was at least Henderson was walking, which is why the club stuck with him and were handsomely rewarded for their patience as the kid became a star right in front of our eyes last season. 

Juan Soto

Do I even need to mentioning the walking adage with Soto? We know he can do that, but the early lack of zip on his batted balls led to some struggles which he overcame the rest of the season. Nobody was cutting Soto last year, and few likely dealt him, but this is a reminder that no player, no matter how great they are, is immune to a slow start.

Josh Naylor

Naylor wasn't walking much and wasn't hitting the ball well early, but those who cut bait on him after the slow start missed out on excellent production the rest of the season as Naylor's true talent level rose to the top.

Kenta Maeda

Maeda's April ended with him allowing 10 earned runs in three innings to the Yankees and owners likely dropped him, especially when he hit the IL a few days later and did not return until late June. However, once he was back and healthy, he was a very productive pitcher the rest of the way.

Sean Manaea

There is no doubt Manaea was being handed pink slips in all formats except draft-and-hold last season after his rough start, but once the Giants found a good usage pattern for him (which he didn't particularly like) Manaea took off production-wise and was very useful down the stretch.

Michael Wacha

Wacha would be another one who was an easy drop early on as the production was simply not there. However, he got right in a hurry and was a tremendous value down the stretch for someone who was plucked up off the waiver wire once he got hot. 

Kyle Bradish

Bradish was nowhere near as hyped last spring as he was this spring. I remember taking him in the 23rd-to-25th round last season, so it was easy to leave him on the reserves and keep him out of the lineup early on. Bradish was a pitching MVP once he got through the rough patch of April.

There are eight examples, four hitters and four pitchers, who went bounced back from disastrous Aprils to produce plenty of value the rest of season. Remember that as you look at those names at the top of this article and wonder what you need to do with them. I would also offer these other names who could potentially be in this same article when I write it in early May of 2025:

• Jack Suwinski
• Mitch Garver
• Corey Seager
• George Springer
• Pablo Lopez
• Brandon Pfaadt
• Aaron Civale

The first month of the season is always problematic because everyone starts at zero, regardless of the stat. If you start off hot, as Garrett Crochet did early on, life is good. If you start off like Andrew Heaney has, then it is a different story. Perhaps you forgot that George Springer went 0 for 31 from July 23rd to August 1st last season, or when Byron Buxton had two different hitless streaks of at least 24 at bats in May and July. You may have also overlooked the period of time when Dylan Cease allowed four or more earned runs over four consecutive starts and pitched to a 9.30 ERA in late summer or when Shane Bieber did the same earlier in the summer over three starts while pitching to a 6.75 ERA, or even when Tyler Glasnow pitched to a 8.22 ERA over three consecutive September outings. 

Bad streaks do not discriminate and strike the lesser as well as the most talented players in the league. We simply notice it more now because of the starting point, which is also a distraction because we don't see players making incremental statistical improvements when their poor starts hide the progress. A prime example of this would be Luis Castillo, who began the season 0-4 with a 5.82 ERA and a 1.66 WHIP but has since gone 3-0 with a 0.90 ERA and a 0.69 WHIP. It is no secret Castillo dislikes pitching in cold weather, but he's pitching some terrific baseball these days after an abysmal start to the season. 

Just remember, this too shall pass.