“It’s early.”
For any team under .500 in April, this is the most common defence. Perhaps this is the simplest defence, too. It’s far easier to dismiss a team’s struggles with “It’s early” than face the realities of the problems at hand.
The problem is: “early” is arbitrary, and too often it’s a term that is moulded to fit the previously-existing intentions of an argument.
Beyond that, “early” is a difficult concept to apply to a team as a whole as it varies drastically from player to player. For players like Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, Russell Martin, or Troy Tulowitzki, a season does not stay in the early stages for very long.