I don't know the original intent of Dan Okrent and company when they created rotisserie baseball – other than the fact that name was derived from the New York City restaurant (La Rôtisserie Française) where they met to scheme up the insanity that we've come to know and love. Maybe there was some hidden meaning in the name "rotisserie" – something alluding to the fact that the season is a long process that requires some patience, similar to the way revolving a chicken on a spit through a fire doesn't cook it as quickly as possible.

Whether you read RotoWire or any of the other fantasy sites out there offering insight and analysis, you're going to see columns preaching patience and a few will even share the same tagline "this is a marathon, not a sprint."

In most circumstances, this concept is referring directly to players that have started the season poorly. Looking at my Bloomberg League roster, I can pick out plenty of unexpected surprises – both good and bad – that have kept my team out of the top spot in the standings after three weeks of games.

• Ben Zobrist hasn't homered yet in 72 at-bats (five steals, however are a pleasant surprise).
• Victor Martinez has a mediocre .261 AVG, 1 HR and 5 RBI.
• Aramis Ramirez, despite three homers, is batting just .139.
• Todd Helton has just three RBI.
• Gavin Floyd (2.02) and Justin Masterson (1.95) have a higher WHIP than John Danks' ERA (1.55).
• Trevor Hoffman has averaged one save per week.
• Neither Chad Billingsley nor Johnny Cueto have provided any reason thus far to be confident that they've turned the corner from their inconsistent 2009 efforts.

Plenty of difference-makers are picked up from the waiver wire in April. The type of players that will ultimately bump your team up a place or two in the standings when it's all said and done in October, but I've been very reluctant to make moves with my roster through the first three free-agent periods. In fact, I've only made two moves (both in the first week) so far with the addition of Franklin Morales and J.J. Hardy in exchange for Jason Hammel and Casey Blake.

So why sit tight?

I took a closer look at the standings this morning at my fifth-place team (69.5 points) and here's what I've found for team weaknesses:

Home runs – Currently, I'm only receiving 4.5 points in this category with 27 long balls. Winnings Pitched is the league leader with 38, so I'm 11 back of first place in homers, but Harold Reynolds is second with just 31 homers. Ultimately, I'm just four home runs away from a 6.5-point increase in the standings. That alone would put me a half-point out of third place overall. I doubt Joe Mauer and Martinez will remain at one homer each for much longer, Zobrist is going to hit 20 between now and October and I wouldn't be surprised if Lou Piniella's rotation plans in the outfield keep Alfonso Soriano healthy enough for 20-25. Bottom line, this category will take care of itself in due time.

Saves – Huston Street is on the DL; probably about a month away from helping me out. Meanwhile, Hoffman, Morales and Chris Perez haven't done much to pick up the slack so far, and neither Perez nor Morales is assured of much as far as job security goes. Morales could lose his interim closer tag to Manny Corpas, and the brittle Kerry Wood will replace Perez as the closer in Cleveland if everything goes as planned with his rehab in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, I may end up having to chase saves on the waiver wire a bit more depending on how these situations play out. Still, with eight in the first three weeks (3.5 points), I'm only four behind second place (12), so a few lucky breaks could provide a pretty significant boost in the standings.

WHIP – A tip of the cap to Floyd, Billingsley, Cueto and Masterson for burying my squad in this category so far. At 1.44, I'm currently dead last and looking a relatively long way up the standings.  I liked all of these guys when I drafted them six weeks ago. I still like them now. That's why I haven't cut bait on any of them yet – even Masterson. It's a calculated risk of sorts, but like Ron Shandler in his Baseball Forecaster, I looked at Gavin Floyd this winter and saw an ace. For what it's worth, he had a 5.52 ERA last April and a 6.68 ERA last May before going dominant over the last four months of the season (3.13 ERA) and finishing with a 4.06 mark. Why would my 200-inning view of Floyd be skewed by 19.1 innings in April?

The average age of my struggling pitchers is 25.5. Development doesn't happen overnight. Look at the monthly splits for Ubaldo Jimenez in 2008, or even for Cueto last year. Young pitchers are volatile, they have to make adjustments to hitters after hitters make adjustments to them. It's a cat and mouse game, and it's rarely statistically friendly every fifth day for an entire season, but patiently waiting it out while the seasoning process is underway will pay off in a big way over the long run.