MLB teams
Dan Szymborski, Special to ESPN.com 9y

Early conclusions from KC's hot start, more

Fantasy MLB, MLB, Kansas City Royals, Washington Nationals

The leading cause of the phenomenon known as "baseball panic" is the erratic month of April. Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint, and the first few weeks of the major league season provide a natural time to form premature conclusions.

Some of these early conclusions prove true, while many others don't. For instance, at the end of last April, declarations of Colorado outfielder Charlie Blackmon having a breakout campaign were accurate; he posted a .775 OPS and made the NL All-Star team. Meanwhile, George Springer was hitting .182 and slugging .218 at the end of April 2104; he went on to hit 10 homers and post 25 RBIs in 26 games in May.

April performance will tell us plenty, but we must be careful about what we believe and what we don't. So what has this April taught us? Let's risk angering the small-sample-size gods and make some premature conclusions of our own.

The Kansas City Royals are already an AL playoff favorite

Coming into the season, the ZiPS projection system believed the Royals were only a .500 team. Even after their hot start (7-0), ZiPS sees Kansas City as only a .512 team going forward. However, the team's projected playoff probability has bounced from a preseason 29.6 percent to a current projection of 57.3 percent.

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