Patience is the companion of wisdom.
- Saint Augustine

It ain’t easy being patient. Sitting there, doing nothing, just waiting while things go downhill around you is exceedingly difficult. However, there are times where the ability to be patient is rewarded with a bounty of success. At the same time, knowing when to jump up off the park bench and wade into the fray is also a commendable trait. The point is, having patience, in theory, is a good thing. In the real world, though, we have to put some rules in place with that patience streak. Below are some thoughts to keep in mind once the regular season bullets start flying.

Make sure your league has DL spots.

You can be patient with a player if he’s on the DL so long as he’s not taking up an active roster spot. If you’re league doesn’t have DL spots, then patience with injured players is extremely difficult.

Understand patience is relative.

In fantasy baseball you have to exercise patience, but the idea is a nuanced one.

If Albert Pujols is struggling you have patience. You know who he is and can be confident that, if he’s healthy he will produce. If Ryan Zimmerman struggles you can let him go much more quickly since struggles are a part of his game. Understanding who players are, and aren’t, will greatly help you deal with a rough start.

The shallower the league, the less patience is needed.

If I’m in a 15-team league with 30 roster spots, there’s a whole chunk of players on rosters which leaves little to get excited about on the waiver wire since 450 players are rostered. If you’re in a 10-team league with 25 roster spots... well... that’s only 250 players being rostered. That leaves 200 additional players on the waiver wire who were not available to you in the deeper league. The shallower the league, the less likely you are to be rewarded with patience. Once you get past your elite level players, you can afford to hit the wire frequently since there are strong players on waivers everywhere you look.

Why is the player struggling?

Is your guy hitting .210 after three weeks? What is the reason for that? Are his skills declining? Is he in a slump? Is he hurt? Has he been “unlucky?” The context of the struggles must be taken into consideration.

For hitters, pay attention to contact and strikeout rates.

The ability to put the bat on the ball, consistently, is one of the main traits of a successful hitter. Some guys – Chris Davis types – don’t accomplish this goal, hence they struggle at times. Regardless if a guy has an 85-percent or 75-percent contact rate, make sure you compare a struggling player’s contact and strikeout rates to his career norm. If things are better than usual, or on pace with his previous levels, don’t worry too much about the early slump. However, if the rates are way off, you need to start looking deeper because there might be a problem.

For pitchers, pay attention to contact and strikeout rates.

Yep, same thing as with batters. A pitcher’s inability to miss bats could be speaking to a skills slippage or injury. It’s a good place to start looking when trying to decide if this “new” level is going to stick.

Understand if the player you’re looking at is truly struggling or not.

Let’s say Jay Bruce is a 26-homer bat. The season is 26 weeks long. That’s one homer a week, right? If Jay Bruce hits one homer in four weeks he’s “struggling.” But, ask yourself an honest question – could Bruce hit 25 homers in 21 weeks? Sure he could. That pace would be 1.19 homers a week. Remember, we began this exercise assuming Bruce would hit 1.00 homers a week. Homer paces can change instantaneously. Other numbers that can quickly turn around are, obviously, steals and saves. The counting categories take a bit more time as it is a bit more difficult to overcome a slow start there. But in most cases, a hot month can just as easily follow a cold month as a fella could post another struggling stanza.

You need to wait at least a month, hopefully two, before you bail on a player.

This is the toughest part of all the patience talk. You have to wait long enough for the true pattern to emerge and that really takes a couple of months. However, if you wait a third of the season to decide it’s time to make a change, will you have enough time to catch up from the hole you’ve dug yourself? Ideally, I would like a guy to have 100 plate appearances at a minimum and 10 starts as a pitcher before I even begin to consider bailing. Even then, I would still maintain the faith in the players if I had faith in them back in March. Really, two months is the data I would like to have at my fingertips.

Guys who struggled in April last year but turned things around...

Justin Upton had a .569 OPS. The number was at .775 by the time the season was over.

Anthony Rendon was batting .242 with a .596 OPS. He hit .270 with a .797 OPS by the time the season was over.

Brian Dozier hit .191 with a .617 OPS in April. He had five homers through May. In the end he hit 42 homers with a .886 OPS.

Joey Votto hit .229 with a .640 OPS. Five months later he had a season of .326 and .985.

These are the type of players with whom patience is needed -- established players with a track record of success who should return to previous norms if given enough time.

As for pitchers, there is something to be said for hurlers failing to match expectations if they struggle in April. That’s even more the case when you open things up to also include May. If a pitcher stinks early, the hole is hard to dig out of. Realize though, the ratios (ERA and WHIP) can be hurt by a slow start and therefore never truly rebound. Still, that doesn’t mean from date X forward, the former ace couldn’t return to previous levels, even if the overall numbers don’t get there.

Patience is a good thing. So is understanding the truth of what you’re seeing on the field to help you to understand if patience is warranted.