If you’ve ever tried working out on a regular basis, you know that if you stop for over five months, you don’t start the same way you finished.
This is exactly like baseball. If you haven’t seen a pitcher’s best slider or 12-6 curve in over five months, you won’t adjust to it very quickly.
Sure, spring training is supposed to help out both the pitchers and hitters, but the pitchers usually save their best stuff for simulated games and the regular season.
A combination of this and the fact that the weather can be cold and make it very hard for fly balls to become home runs leads to some hitters having very bad starts to the season.
Likewise with pitchers, if you haven’t been pitching your breaking balls and getting command of your fastballs down for a long time, you are not in peak performance.
Many exercise science doctors agree that it takes at least 30 days to get into the best shape possible, and only three to become out of shape. This still holds true for professional athletes, and this can lead to terrible starts to the season.
These 15 guys are the slowest starters to the beginning of the season, and they also have the biggest drop-offs from their regular season stats in April.