I've been someone who has advocated that we give him a bit of time in the face of what I saw as early criticism. However, while his interrupted pre-season may be an inhibiting factor, playing others ahead of him in recent weeks/months probably says something about where he's rated at the moment.
In terms of attempting to get an ROI, apropos the bolded bit of your post, it fits the "throwing good money after bad" approach, described here:
Sunk cost fallacy (also called the "sunk cost effect," "sunk cost heuristic," "Concorde fallacy," "argument from waste," "investment trap," "escalation of commitment," "irrational escalation" and "escalation bias.")
In economics, a sunk cost is any cost that has already been paid and cannot be recovered. The sunk cost fallacy is a mistake in reasoning in which the sunk costs of an activity - instead of the future costs and benefits - are considered when deciding whether to continue the activity. The sunk cost fallacy makes it more likely that a person or an organization continues with an activity in which they have already invested money, time, or effort, even if they would not start the activity had they not already invested in it. The greater the size of the sunk investment, the more people tend to invest further, even when the return on added investment appears not to be worthwhile.
This trap is sometimes described as "throwing good money after bad," because the resources and effort are already lost, no matter what you do now.
http://leepublish.typepad.com/strategicthinking/2015/03/sunk-cost-fallacy.html