Fun With Sample Sizes

Early in the baseball season you'll hear everyone say, "you can't judge players right now because of small sample sizes". And that's true. The start of the season there's always going to be some weird stats. High BABIP's, low ERA's, etc. Here's some fun with small sample sizes. (Stats via Fangraphs)

Individual Batting Stats
- TWO Reds players currently have an OBP ABOVE .500! Both Joey Votto and Shin-Soo Choo have an OBP above .500. They're reaching base half the time they come up to bat. Incredible.

- While two Reds players lead the league in OBP, the White Sox have the two worst players with OBP. Jeff Keppinger and surprisingly Adam Dunn currently have the worst OBP's in baseball.

- Sticking with Keppinger, his OBP is at .167 while his batting average is at .172. Rare that you see both of those stats so close together.

- BABIP is one of those goofy stats that can produce other goofy numbers for a player. Example is Chris Johnson of the Braves. Johnson's career OBP is right at league average. This season though since he leads the league in BABIP his OBP is .435. Regression alert here.

- Early ISO numbers are the definition of small sample sizes. Not surprisingly both Justin Upton and Chris Davis has ISO numbers in the .400's.

- Not surprising in the plate discipline department Pablo Sandoval and Josh Hamilton are your league leaders in all the swing percentage categories.

- Brandon Crawford in his first year only accumulated a 1.7 WAR. He has a 1.2 WAR so far this season.

Individual Pitching Stats
- Jake Arrieta leads the league with a BB% of 18.4! Not a shock that he was sent to the minors.

- On the flip side Max Scherzer has an incredible 40% K rate.

- Roy Halladay has given up TWO home runs per 9 innings so far this year.

- Jason Hammel's xFIP is at 5.31! He's doing himself no favors there but he has left 60% of the runners on base.

Team Stats
- The Marlins lead the league in offensive futility: They have the lowest HR's, Runs, ISO Power, wOBA, and wRC+

- On the flip side the Astros pitching league the league in futility: They have the highest HR/9, lowest K/9, lowest LOB%, highest FIP, and second lowest WAR