Back in the day, when Lou Pinella managed the Seattle Mariners, the squad was always pretty good. Still, you can’t win ‘em all and one April, I remember the M’s losing a series that changed the way I looked at competitive baseball. I think the series the M’s lost was at home and I’m even more certain they lost badly to a team which ought not to have beaten them. In a post-loss interview when Pinella was still peeved over the L (and for those who don’t know him, even in a good mood he was always a little salty), one reporter asked him how he felt about the losses. The only post-loss interview I remember better is the great Tommy Lasorda expressing how he felt about a particular Dave Kingman performance. Now I wasn’t able to locate a media clip of Lou, so I’ll paraphrase. Pinella said something to the effect that the losses didn’t matter – that April games didn’t matter. They played them because they were on the schedule, but they didn’t matter over the course of a 162-game season.

With all due respect to Lou — who I’d like to see in the Hall someday — I disagree. Every Win matters. Every loss does too.

My memory is the M’s disappointed that year, falling short of the playoffs by a few games – maybe games they lost in April. Fantasy managers need to guard against the same line of thinking. In fact, I think totally differently than dear sweet Lou. I think April is a critical time and my gut is telling me that this year, MLB teams are going to want to jump on all the wins they can in April because the rule changes have introduced so many variables—all at once—to full in-season strategy.

What can you do to win early in April? Here’s a few things that might help with that.

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