Stick with April’s struggling stars

More than a few major leaguers are thankful to see April come to an end.

We all try to practice patience and tell ourselves it’s only a few weeks into a long season. But once the first month’s worth of statistics are in the books and our franchise cornerstones haven’t caught fire, it’s hard not to start worrying.

Yet how many fantasy owners panicked last April when their big bats struggled out of the gate? Many of them later traded or even cut those players, only to see them rebound … on someone else’s roster.

So if you’re worrying about Troy Tulowitzki, who entered Monday hitting .172; Carlos Gomez, who went the first month of the season without a home run; or Lorenzo Cain, who had a .230 average and three stolen bases, your season isn’t over.

Far from it, actually.

Let’s take a look at what was going on last season as April drew to a close.

How many fantasy owners were wondering a year ago if Carlos Gonzalez finally had reached the end of the line? He was coming off an injury-plagued 2014 in which he hit .238 with 11 homers in 260 at-bats. At the end of April, he was hitting .200 with two home runs and six RBI.

He wasn’t a whole lot better in May, either. A pair of homers and a batting average of .235. That’s two bad months … totaling 160 at-bats. Now compare it to his seven previous major league seasons in which he hit .294 with a .520 slugging percentage over 2,817 at-bats.

Over the final four months, CarGo turned out to be the hitter we knew. He finished 2015 with a .271 average, 40 homers and 97 RBI. (From June 1 to the end of the season, the numbers were .292, 36 homers, 84 RBI, .624 slugging percentage.)

Gonzalez wasn’t the only one struggling in April to turn things around in a big way.

Edwin Encarnacion

April 2015: .205, 4 HRs, 10 RBI

End of 2015: .277, 39 HRs, 111 RBI

Adam Eaton

April 2015: .192, 0 HRs, 0 RBI, 1 SB

End of 2015: .287, 14 HRs, 56 RBI, 18 SB

Andrew McCutchen

April 2015: .194, 2 HRs, 13 RBI, 0 SB

End of 2015: .292, 23 HRs, 96 RBI, 11 SB

Robinson Cano

April 2015: .253, 1 HRs, 6 RBI

End of 2015: .287, 21 HRs, 79 RBI

Albert Pujols

April 2015: .208, 3 HRs, 9 RBI

End of 2015: .244, 40 HRs, 95 RBI

Even if you were stuck with their awful April numbers, these players were good enough over the final five months to repay fantasy owners for their loyalty.

So while it might feel like the season is slipping away, the differences between hot and cold streaks are magnified so much more when sample sizes are small.

Joey Votto got off to a great start last season, hitting .317 with seven home runs and 17 RBI in April. Unfortunately, he followed it up with a .253 average, two homers and seven RBI in May.

Did that month-long slump cause fantasy owners to panic? Of course not, because he had those stats from April in the bank. And he went on to have a typical Votto-matic year, hitting .314 with 29 homers, 80 RBI and 95 runs.

So fantasy owners who might be concerned about Votto’s slow start in 2016 (.229, two HRs, 11 RBI, six runs in April) only need to look at what happened last season to see all isn’t lost.

This April’s anomalies

So which other players are creating early-season concern for fantasy owners? Let’s see if we can calm some of those fears.

•Anthony Rizzo was hitting .218.

That’s 60 points below his average last season. But he’s making the most of those hits, with eight home runs and a major league-leading 24 RBI in April. Rizzo has improved almost across the board with 18 walks and 14 strikeouts. The real reason not to worry: He’s hitting .161 on balls in play. Don’t be surprised if he’s the NL MVP.

•Jose Abreu had three home runs and a .229 average.

Abreu has been a slow starter in both of his previous major league seasons. Look at his career on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS) for each month: March/April (.848), May (.768), June (.950), July (.996), August (.890), September/October (.856). Though he might take a while to warm up, Abreu sizzles in the summertime.

•McCutchen was hitting .226. Learn anything from last season? He’s 32 points ahead of where he was last April, with three more homers. McCutchen’s 23% strikeout rate would be the highest of his career. Don’t expect that or the poor average (he’s a .296 hitter over eight big-league seasons) to continue.

•Albert Pujols is hitting .176. Yes, he’s 36 and even great hitters can’t outslug Father Time. Pujols isn’t a .300 hitter any longer, but he can make opposing pitchers pay for mistakes. With six home runs in April, he is on pace for his 14th season with 30 or more. His .137 batting average on balls in play was the second lowest of all qualified hitters in April. (Only Kyle Seager’s .129 was worse.)

For almost every slow-starting marquee player, there’s a reasonable explanation for why he has underperformed — a nagging injury, a mechanical flaw that needs correcting or bad luck.

Those things can happen at any point in the season, which is why players have good weeks and bad weeks or good months and bad months.

There’s no guarantee that every single player will rebound enough to meet or exceed his preseason projections the way Gonzalez or McCutchen did last season. But the most important thing to remember is those April stats are in the past. What matters most is what players will do from this point forward.

If your star players struggled in April and you’re in the bottom half of your league standings, it might be a good thing. Once those players bounce back to their normal level of production, they can’t help but carry you upward with them.

Gordon suspension

One player who won’t have an opportunity to improve upon his April numbers this month is Miami Marlins second baseman Dee Gordon.

He was suspended for 80 games after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs and will not be able to play until late July.

The NL leader last season in stolen bases and batting average leaves a tremendous hole in fantasy lineups, mostly because his owners were counting on him to provide the bulk of their steals and most likely didn’t draft any other major speed sources.

It was a crushing blow to fantasy owners relying heavily on that kind of league-leading production. Gordon’s absence might have an even greater impact because there aren’t many other elite sources of stolen bases.

Unlike a player who’s coming back from an injury, Gordon can be expected to be at or near peak performance almost immediately. At last year’s pace, he’d be good for 20 steals over the final two months of the regular season.

With the exception of head-to-head leagues, where Gordon will be back in time for the stretch run and the playoffs, the best course of action for Gordon’s Rotisserie league owners might be to forget about competing in steals — and trade him for someone who can help in the other offensive categories.