I participate in two fantasy baseball keeper leagues and it’s been a season of patience in both of them.

In the league I run, I was down in the bottom 3 spots after the first month and frankly, it didn’t look good. I thought I’d had a good draft, but my guys just weren’t producing.

Looking over my team, I really liked the players I had and I didn’t want to do anything drastic early in the season so I decided to stick it out and hope they played better. I also decided to pick up Melvin Mora who was in the midst of a hot streak and try to ride that while I could. I also picked up Jose Guillen when he was dropped by the team that drafted him after his slow start. Both of those guys got hot along with Vlad and Abreu and and I started climbing out of last place in RBIs (I’m now in 3rd place in RBIs).

My pitching is starting to come around too. Patience with my starters (I rejected trade offers for Johan Santana) is looking like the right move. I held on to a few struggling closers (David Riske and Rocky Biddle) for too long though and once again I’m reminded that relief pitchers can have a great season one year and a clunker the next.

In the weekly head-to-head league my team has been ravaged by injuries. At one point, I had 7 guys on the DL at once (and I was sitting in last place).

I started out losing 4 of my first 5 weeks, but turned it around winning 4 of the last 5 and posting some very good scores. This league is about 90% starting pitching (something I find kinda stupid); if you have more starts from your starting pitchers in the week, you’re probably going to win.

Some of my starters were really struggling early (Pineiro, Lowe, Hampton) but seem to be coming around of late. I also got Leiter, Nomar and Burnett back from the DL recently which should help. I’m only one game out of a tie for 3rd place, so I’m still in the hunt (though I’ll be losing this week).

I guess the lession is: if you feel like you have a good team after the draft, be patient with it. 🙂