Popular opinion regarding how certain major league teams and players start a season generally holds that all authoritative conclusions made before June 1 are premature. Because teams and players turn cold starts into fine seasons, and hot starts into prolonged slumps, forecasting performance based on the season’s initial third often results in poor predictions.
All the experts who eulogized David Ortiz’s career at 34 years old in May 2009 certainly learned hard the lesson that two months of at-bats is simply not enough to accurately predict a player’s rest-of-season destiny. If it were, Ortiz might have ended up with something like eight home runs and 50 RBI instead of the 28 and 99 that approximate his career averages.
The season’s first two months, as in all, feature slow-starting household names as well as no-namers lighting pitching staffs on fire.
For those struggling, like Albert Pujols and Tim Lincecum, it is hard to fathom them continuing in their futility. Likewise, it is suspect to assume that the likes of Lance Lynn and Chris Capuano will continue their Cy Young performances throughout the season on the mound.
Superficial stats are often fool’s gold when predicting future success, which is why a glimpse at the underlying vital signs of these 10 players sheds light on just what can be expected from them as the calendar flips to June.