In the small sample size that is the first month of the season, a slow start can make for some ugly, unreliable numbers.

Really good players can look like they've lost their ability to do anything productive, but in some cases, a run of bad luck to start the season can be misleading. And if you're not careful, you can give up on a player too soon, especially if you're looking at the antiquated numbers -- batting average, slugging percentage and RBI -- important to most season-long fantasy leagues.

In the cases of the players below, some of their counting stats aren't looking so good over the first three weeks of the 2018 baseball season, but their underlying numbers tell a different story. We'll be looking at a few key metrics to help us determine which hitters are doing better than one would think. Those include batting average on balls in play (BABIP), walk percentage (BB%), hard-hit rate and ground ball-to-fly ball ratio (GB/FB).

Players who are showing good plate discipline, hitting the ball hard, keeping the ball off the ground and yet have a low BABIP are generally players who are doing everything right, but just not getting the results. These are players you would expect to turn things around at some point soon, thus, these are the players you should be buying low on right now, before their production catches up to their peripherals.