The first moments of the baseball season are a flood of sights, sounds and feelings. After a long winter, the game comes hurtling back into your life like an old flame.

It happens suddenly, when the zeroes across the stats and standings ledgers begin to get filled all at once with data. In the absence of the massive amounts of information and experience that will pile up as the season eventually churns on, every plate appearance seems so much more meaningful.

Little wonder, then, that fans can lose our sense of reason and perspective at this time of year.

As a reminder, here are a few of the irrational thoughts that will cross your mind in the coming weeks.

We’re Doomed

Okay, sure. Giancarlo Stanton hit approximately six kilometres of dingers Thursday, and Josh Donaldson can apparently no longer throw a baseball.

There remain, however, 160 games in the season. A lot can happen over that time.

Nobody likes to hear “it’s a long season” when they are venting their spleen after an especially disappointing loss, but even a very good team is going to lose around 70 games this year. Sometimes, you lose them in bunches, and sometimes, those bunches congregate towards the beginning of the schedule. Sometimes, those losses look ugly, but then, don’t most losses look bad?

That’s not to say that a bad start is no big deal, especially for this Jays franchise that has a history of poor showings in April. But at least wait for some additional evidence before jumping ship.

He’s going to have a great season!

Someone is going to have a good game, or a good week, or inevitably a good first month of the season. We can all scoff (or shudder) at the joke that Stanton is obviously on pace to hit 324 home runs this season. But within days, a player that has a few more knocks than initially expected suddenly changes the narrative on his whole career.

It makes for a compelling narrative: A guy who finds something over the off-season, and suddenly he’s turned the corner. When it’s the players you root for, it can be easy to invest yourself in such hopes.

For the most part, these stories tend not to bear out. Although last year, Justin Smoak provided just enough fuel to keep these notions salient in the minds of many.

Toronto Blue Jays on Sportsnet NOW Livestream the Toronto Blue Jays on the most popular devices. Plus, get over 150 marquee MLB matchups, the Home Run Derby, All-Star Game and Postseason.

Our bullpen stinks/is awesome!

There’s no aspect of baseball where small samples are turned into big hairy deals than the bullpen. Blow a save on opening day, and suddenly you’ve lost your nerve and your closer’s mentality. Blow two in the first week, and it becomes a crisis.

On the other hand, if the bullpen manages to induce some weak contact in the middle innings for a week, and a number of the relievers start showing 0.00 ERAs, the strength of the relief corps begins to get dreamt upon.

Bullpens are notoriously fickle. April’s set-up man can turn into July’s closer, or August’s DFA candidate. In some seasons, maybe even both.

With so many new faces and a wide variance of potential outcomes for the Blue Jays bullpen this year, you’d be well-served to hold off on any judgments.

At the Letters Ben Nicholson-Smith is Sportsnet’s baseball editor. Arden Zwelling is a senior writer. Together, they bring you the most in-depth Blue Jays podcast in the league, covering off all the latest news with opinion and analysis, as well as interviews with other insiders and team members.

He’s a Rookie of the Year candidate!

Every season, there’s a slew of young players who get called up to the big team to start the season, and a few of them manage to string together a good first few weeks to their career. It’s an irresistible story, in part because everyone wants to see a new superstar.

But just as often, these young lads cool off, or the league gets a book on them. Just as quickly, the “where has the April magic gone?” stories start to pour out.

And besides: The Rookie of the Year is probably in the minors until May anyhow, with his team attempting to eke another year of control out of him by manipulating his service time.

This manager has lost his touch

Managing in the first weeks of the season is probably a lot more fun than many jobs, so one needn’t shed too many tears for the skippers. But the stresses involved with sorting out a new roster and fresh faces gives the second guessers in the stands, on the barstools and in their armchairs a distinct advantage at this point of the season.

A manager is probably attempting to understand how he can best make use of the new resources at his disposal in the early weeks, while also dealing with injuries, player regression or just bad luck.

In the same way that at the end of the season, managers’ decisions get an extra bit of scrutiny, the early results can get parsed far more than they deserve. Even if you’re doing it right, it can come out looking wrong.

But then, what would a baseball season be without a “managers on the hot seat” article written before you can wear short sleeves to the ballpark?