Week 4: Last place is mine!

It's taken some doing, but I've successfully sunk to the bottom of the heap.  12th in a 12-team league.

Is it time to hit the panic button?  Punt on the season and start playing for next year?  At this time last year, I was in first place. At the time, I was riding a hot start from SS Alex Gonzalez ($2) and SP Colby Lewis ($6).  I finished 6th, mainly due to injuries such as the season-ending concussing of Justin Morneau.  I made the trade for Ellsbury, but he got hurt, too. My league-mates all agreed I was torpedoed by the DL. 

Now, I'm off to the opposite start. What to do?  It seems 2 or 3 hot players -- or cold players -- can make all the difference a league this tight and competitive.  So far, I'm all cold.

Pitching so far is my downfall.  Buchholz and Lewis, who "anchored my rotation" last year, are off to tough starts. The fliers I took on Ogando ($2) and Litsch ($4) may pay off, though. Not paying for a closer seems silly now, with Papelbon, Soria, and Rivera only making mid-$20s. I've got zero saves, although so do 4 other teams. My strategy was to take power set-up guys to work the Ks, ERA, and WHIP categories, figuring one of them might end up closing at some point during the season. Daniel Bard was job 1... The bidding war got up to $14, which I'm fine with. Darren O'Day ($1), Bobby Jenks ($3), Octavio Dotel ($1), and Ryan Perry ($1) round out the bullpen. I thought Ogando was going to be part of this crew, but he's been a revelation as a starter so far.  

As for hitting, is it just my imagination or are a LOT of hitters off to slow starts this year? It's reasonable a virtual lock that hitters will warm up as the summer does. The time to buy hitting is now. And the time to not panic on hitting is now. How patient an owner is will determine what kind of trades go down. Already Adrian Gonzalez, Derek Jeter, BJ Upton, and Derrek Lee have been moved. A guy like Youkilis (.222) at an affordable $36 would be a nice target here; he'll be hitting in the middle of a killer line-up that will almost certainly put up big crooked numbers this summer when the wind starts blowing out at Fenway.  

The key to my season may very well be Joe Mauer. I locked him up for 2 more years at $29. The last time I wrote him off because of weird injuries was 2009, then he came back and knocked the cover off the ball for 4 months. Getting him back may be the best trade I can make... Assuming I don't panic in the meantime.