Ready? Set. Don’t Fret! Early Season Roto Category Trends to Note

Aaron Judge only has one home run as of this writing in the 2023 MLB season. What the heck!? Shouldn’t fantasy managers rostering Judge have at least three or four home runs by now?! Wait…wait…relax. Ok? It’s been a long offseason, but we made it. We’re here. Now you get to wake up and read real stats! If the anticipation of opening day has clouded your judgment, I’m here to provide some insight into how your category totals should line up throughout the first few months of the season.

First, home runs typically increase over the first three months. By the end of May 2022, Aaron Judge had 18 out of 62 of his final home runs. That’s 29%. But a 62-homer season may not be the best example of this trend. Just look at these hitters who reached over 20 big flies by the end of the season, yet hadn’t gotten it going just yet by the end of May:

Of the top 5 finishers in home run totals in 2022 (Judge, Schwarber, Alonso, Riley, Alvarez) only Judge and Alvarez were in the top 5 after the first two months of the season. So don’t freak out and make a trade by Memorial Day just because Big Al isn’t hitting dingers.

While there has been some variation over the past four full seasons, home runs tend to increase as the first four months of the season continue on. This has always been common knowledge given the influence of air temperatures on fly balls, but it’s nice to see it here in a pretty colorful bar chart. Keep in mind that those light blue July bars are shorter because of the All-Star break. This isn’t an analysis of exactly when you should start to worry about your home run hitter not hitting home runs, but it does give some perspective. Take, for example, Anthony Santander. He hit 33 homers in 2022 and he didn’t do it all in the first few months. It is still fairly cold in Baltimore in April. Santander ramped up across the first half:

What about strikeouts? There’s a very interesting trend pattern in 2018 and 2019. Why do strikeout totals seem to be higher in the first month of the season? One hypothesis is that since teams are starting their aces on opening day, perhaps the month of Mar/Apr has more quality, top of the rotation, starts. I don’t know why strikeouts were down to start the year in 2021 but in 2022 a late start to the season threw things off. If the trend of 2018 and 2019 returns and pitchers have a slight advantage in the early months, then now may be the time to focus in on your strikeout totals.

These totals are not isolated to starters so further research would be required to help pull strategy from these trends. The visual raises questions, doesn’t it? Does this mean I should be streaming more often early in the season to take advantage of the K fish swimming in the baseball pond? From a strikeout perspective, maybe. But it’s hard to determine if that’s a good strategy for your earned runs and ratios. 2018 and 2019 trends would tell you that starters are giving up more earned runs while 2021 and 2022 flipped that narrative a bit:

I tend to stay cautious with my starts at the beginning of the season because I don’t want my ratios to get out of hand right away. However, I may have to dig into this a little more to determine if there’s some pattern to pitching in both totals and ratios that would suggest good months to stream and good months to limit. Typically younger, more volatile, pitchers are getting chances later in the season while more proven main-stay rotation types are pitching in the beginning. That’s one hypothesis.

Baseball is always much easier to write about when there’s baseball actually being played. Congratulations. You made it to the next season. Now, take advantage of the heavy strikeout totals accumulating in the early months of the season, and don’t trade away sluggers just because they aren’t slugging just yet.