Good Ol’ April Overreacting

Aug 18, 2012; Toronto, ON, Canada; Fans attempt to catch a foul ball during the game between the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre. The Rangers beat the Blue Jays 2-1. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY SportsAlost every baseball fan knows that there are 162 games in a season.

Despite this common knowledge it’s human nature to look at standings in April.

Unfortunately it’s also common that people take the standings seriously in April. Even though every season we’re reminded that early season records don’t tell the September story most of the time.

It would be hard to look at an 8-12 record at the start of any other sport and not get a little worried. With the Toronto Blue Jays having 142 games left there’s no reason to panic now.

Yes losses in April count as much as the ones in September, no one’s denying that. It’s just too small a sample size for people to extrapolate over the rest of the season, which is kind of what fans are doing.

I can forgive fans that panic from a bad start.

What I can’t understand is fans that just give up on the season in April.

I’ve already heard some fans say it’s going to be a 2 year process. Are you kidding me, were 20 games in! Forget a 2 year process. Win now, next year and the year after that!

The starting rotation has been consistently good after the 2nd time through the rotation.

The offense has woken up every now and then, they just haven’t been consistent. It’s a pain in the rear end waiting for the lineup to start producing consistently but what can you do.

In 2009 the Jays were 27-14 and ended the season 75-87 so a lot can change quickly. The Oakland Athletics were 22-30 last season and ended up winning 94 games. For the sake of the Jays fan base sanity you’d hope the Jays turn things around quicker than that but the point is a lot can change quickly.

Of course it would be great if the Jays could just start the season well so we could just enjoy it and avoid all the annoying panic and avoid having to have these annoying conversations.

Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out that way so fans are bound to keep panicking until the Jays start winning consistently.

It’s a looong season so the Jays just have to stay in contention until late August. That’s all they have to do. If they have a 8-12 record to start September then we’ve probably got a problem.