Incredibly Small Samples: Fun, Agony & Something Helpful

Did you draft Dustin Pedroia, who is on pace for almost 300 home runs? Mookie Betts? In a fit of extreme homerism, the entire Red Sox lineup, which will surely score 1,296 runs? That must feel pretty good. Good for you, Pete. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Or, wait — you were the one who drafted Kyle Lohse, weren’t you? Threw a mid-round pick at Mat Latos? Wrote “stream Nate Karns” on your list of good Tuesday decisions? Do you regret it?

Man, there have been some truly brutal starts to kick off the season. It’s really easy to make a knee-jerk decision in reaction to such preposterous, ego-damaging, season-dooming starts, but you have to remember — and I think it goes without saying — that these guys will (probably) never be worse this year than they were today.

It’s a long year. You will be rewarded for your patience. Deep breath! Annnnnnnnd out.

Besides, we dismiss spring training performances as meaningless primarily for their small sample sizes. Are the first three days of the season all that different?

Let’s talk Lohse. He’s not an elite fantasy starter by any means, but in each of the last four years he has thrown at least 188.1 innings and won an average of 12.5 games all while recording a 3.28 ERA and 1.14 WHIP during that span. That’s a roundabout way of saying: the guy won’t hurt your team. On every day but April 6, 2015, at least.

Yet an insultingly bad performance such as Lohse’s, especially when it’s not concealed by a season’s worth of stats, can drive an owner to irrationality. Lohse, last season’s No. 41 starter, had been dropped in 3,026 of Yahoo! Fantasy leagues hours after his start and 6,954 leagues as of this morning.. In a shallow mixed league, there may be someone better, but in general, the owners who dropped Lohse arguably have overreacted.

If you took a fine-tooth comb to the head of hair on Lohse’s start, you would see a .471 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) against, a 28.6-percent home run-to-fly ball (HR/FB) rate, and maybe a little bit of lice. The analyst in you would internally scoff: “It would be impossible for him to sustain such bad luck!” (Maybe it wouldn’t say that. Mine probably wouldn’t say that, either. If anything, it would have a cool, old-timey accent.) Ultimately, if it happened in the spring, you or I would’ve dismissed it. But it’s April, so I guess that means all bets are off.

Let’s assume Lohse would still finish the season with his Steamer projection. That means we fundamentally assume he would be, for the remainder of the season, a better pitcher than his end-of-season projection:

2015	ERA	WHIP	IP	TBF	H	ER	HR	SO	BB
Steamer	4.29	1.29	195.0	834	208	93	27	134	44
April 6	21.60	3.00	3.1	20	10	8	2	1	0
Rest of season	3.99	1.26	191.2	814	198	85	25	133	44

It’s a gross oversimplification of his skill or ability; then again, this one bad start is equally so. Lohse is an absurdly obvious regression candidate. He should never be worse this season than he is now — something I feel like I don’t need to tell a savvy FanGraphs reader such as yourself, but hey, here we are, talking about fantasy owners doing arguably un-savvy things.

The best fantasy owners don’t always make the best or most optimal decisions. Even when they do, they’re not guaranteed victory; that’s just the name of the game. What winners do, however, is exploit the impatient mistakes of their fellow owners with consistency and success.

Starting pitching runs deep this year, but if the back of your rotation is weak or you have a warm body filling a bench slot, take a chance on Lohse. Same goes for Latos, a superior pitcher, albeit one tagged with health and performance concerns. His 2014 output and health was not reminiscent of one of baseball’s most consistent pitchers dating back to 2010, and he may have carried those problems into this season. Nevertheless, his 3.25 ERA (3.65 FIP) and 1.15 WHIP last year would still play up right now in the shallowest of leagues, regardless of his strikeout rate.

With all that said, we’re two — count ’em, two! — games deep, depending on which fan base you ask, so every sample right now is a ridiculously small one. Doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with them. One could be moved, perhaps foolishly, to try to identify peculiar trends that may defy sample size caveats. What follows is one such attempt in doing so — but not without some super cheesy extrapolation.

Holy cow the Cardinals are on pace to steal 648 bases!!!!!!
The Cardinals attempted five steals (four successes) in their Opening Day victory over the Cubs, a mark that took them 11 games to reach last year. Moreover, four of the five attempts came against David Ross, who, with a 37-percent career caught-stealing rate, is no slouch behind the plate, so you can’t simply chalk it up to the Cardinals taking advantage of a miserable arm.

The last five MLB clubs to steal four bases on Opening Day ended up stealing, on average, 132 bases for the season. And the last time the Cardinals stole four bases in any game, they finished the season with 91 steals in 128 attempts. (In contrast: they stole only 57 bases in 89 attempts last year.) Part of me wants to bring up the last time the Cardinals stole four bases this early in the season to provide more historical context — 1987, in their second game — and, with a straight face, casually cite their 248 stolen bases. Adept baseball fans will know the two names that ran (pun intended) that total so high.

The previous paragraph does not seal St. Louis’ baserunning fate by any means. Beat outlets reported — with a bit of an eye-roll — on Matheny’s desire to “continue to be aggressive” on the base paths. It’s not much different from the preseason “best shape of my life” chatter. But if Matheny really was trying to set a tone for the season, then Jason Heyward, Kolten Wong, Matt Carpenter and even Matt Holliday (who, if his power drops off this year, could recoup some of his lost value on the base paths) stand to benefit from this potential paradigm shift.

Or the Cardinals will just, you know, not do anything differently.