Should Francisco Lindor and other slow starts worry fantasy managers?

Yahoo Fantasy experts Scott Pianowski and Dalton Del Don look at some highly rostered players off to slow starts in the 2021 season.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: It's the middle of April. Fantasy baseball season is underway, and you need some sage wisdom from Scott Pianowski and from Dalton Del Don. And we're here to tell you not to panic on those earlier round picks, not to panic on the franchise players on your roster. Don't go making a silly Francisco Lindor trade because the guy hasn't hit for a week. It's going to come around for him. Michael Conforto was dropped in the lineup one day. He's still going to have, I think, a 100, 115 RBI season for a very good Mets lineup.

So patience is the order of the day. Talk about some deeper guys that I'm worried you might be cutting because they don't have good batting averages-- look at Robbie Grossman. Well under the Mendoza in Detroit. Yasmani Grandal has a horrible average for Chicago. Ian Happ hasn't hit on the other side of Chicago. These guys all have excellent walk and strikeout rates. In most cases, they have more walks than strikeouts. That's what a professional hitter looks like. Grossman's OBP is actually over 400, and he offers some category juice.

So, walks and strikeouts stabilize quickly. I think a lot of times they can help us figure out who's going to come around. And it's only been a week, a week and a half with most of these guys, anyway. I think, Dalton, the word of the day has to be patience.

DALTON DEL DON: Absolutely. I mean, you're a little concerned if you have Fernando Tatis in the shoulder. But barring injuries, I'm not worried about any of these big names. I mean, you just look at most of them, and they're likely to have a low BABIP this time of year. We're talking about a 40 at-bat sample.

Stephen Strasburg has seven walks in 10 innings. And his velocity is down, and he was grabbing his shoulder. So maybe there's some concern there. James Karinchak is not the closer people wanted when they got him for Cleveland. So there are a couple you can name, obvious downgrades. But for the most part, and especially those studs in the early rounds, just patience. It's so early in the year. It's a marathon. So yeah, I'm not worried about any of these big names off to slow starts.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: The one guy who I'm always going to worry about a little bit Strasburg, maybe because I just have been calling him Stress-burg the last few years. I feel like a trip to the IL is part and parcel with that guy every season. You're really paying for 20 to 25 starts as opposed to 30 plus.

You mentioned saves, let's also preach a little patience there. Guys like Josh Hader, Aroldis Chapman, they're throwing the ball great right now. They only have one save. That's just situational. The Yankees haven't hit as much as we expected, but that's still a 95 win team on paper. The Brewers are going to be one of the contenders in the NL Central, and they like Hader in the more traditional closer role this year than maybe he has been in years past.

This is a great time to go out. If somebody thought that maybe Hader was going to be more fun racking up more saves or they thought Chapman was going to be on a 40-save pace, maybe you can sniff around. Maybe the rest of the bullpen has gone kablooey. Maybe they lost somebody. Maybe they lost a Tatis or somebody they need-- offensive help. Don't sweat the save column. Or the win column, for that matter. Jacob deGrom pitched out of his mind for two starts. He doesn't have a win. We're kind of sick of that story. But he's going to have 15 to 18 wins by the end of the season. I still think he could maybe even win 20. So look at how well your pitchers are pitching and don't necessarily worry if there's a W or an SV next to their name.

DALTON DEL DON: That's a good point. You know, Hader doesn't even have three innings pitched this season as we sit here yet. It's just so circumstantial. He's going to have a four, five save week here soon. So yeah. It's early, and these samples are ridiculously small still.