The baseball season is less than a week old. Many teams haven’t even made it to the fifth starter in their rotations yet. There are still some players rehabbing down in extended spring training for cryin’ out loud. Yet some fantasy baseball owners are already starting to panic, as they are wont to do, because their team is not playing up to their expectations.

Don’t be that owner.

Of the many things I have learned in my two-plus decades of playing fantasy baseball, perhaps the most beneficial is importance of patience. I don’t get too worked up about where my team is in the standings or how most players are doing until Memorial Day. If your team is near the bottom of your league’s standings at the end of May… then you can start reaching for the panic button. Until then, relax and realize that it’s still early. Your team might be in last place in your roto league right now, but it could very well be in first place by the end of the weekend. Have some faith that the homework you did to prepare for draft day was worth the effort and don’t start second guessing yourself about every player who happens to be off to a slow start. There’s still more than 150 games left to go. If this were a fantasy football season, we’d still be in the first quarter of the first game of the season. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, blah, blah, blah…

Case in point: 2006 MVP Justin Morneau. The Minnesota Twins slugger was probably the first AL first baseman selected in your fantasy draft, yet he struggled during spring training and after four regular season games he is still hitless and his owners are pulling their hair out. Chill out, people. Morneau will be fine. It’s not like he hasn’t scuffled through rough stretches at the plate before. In fact, during his aforementioned MVP campaign he batted just .208 in April.

In Morneau’s first 10 at bats this year, he struck out twice and grounded out eight times. The lack of line drives or anything resembling a fly ball was rather alarming for Morneau. He usually winds up chasing and diving after pitches when he is in a funk at the plate, often times missing wildly with his unconventional Fred-McGriff-meets-Bobby-Orr-type swing. At least he’s making some contact.

There are good signs. On Thursday, Morneau started driving the ball in the air a bit more. Sure he flew out a couple times, but hey at least one of them was a sacrifice fly, so he’s got that going for him, which is nice. He’s reportedly been taking lots of extra batting practice too. And, in a sign that he hasn’t started pressing too much, he has been playing gold glove defense. He’s not taking his bad at bats out to the field on defense.

If the Morneau owner in your fantasy league is panicking, the best thing you can do is offer to take him off their hands. It’s called buying low. Of course, you might opt to wait on that trade offer until after the Twins weekend series with the Kansas City Royals, whose pitching staff just got done inexplicably mowing down the 1927 Yankees, er… the Detroit Tigers rock-star lineup. Morneau had more at bats (69) against the Royals last year than any other team, but he hit just .232 against them, with a .639 OPS, zero home runs, and only four RBI. The trends suggest his early-April lack of production could last until Monday.

Just don’t wait too long to make lowball offers on struggling fantasy studs because Morneau, like many others who are currently slumping, is just one good game away from snapping out of it.

And for those of you with Morneau, or Matt Holliday, or Alfonso Soriano, or Placido Polanco, or (insert name here), there’s no need to panic yet.