Mason’s Musings: Fun With Small Samples (Hitter Edition)

In 2022, I decided to fly to Las Vegas for the NFBC live events to compete in the high stakes events. If you have never been, it is a really great week of events with a ton of fantastic players. On Saturday morning, they run about eight Main Event drafts at the same time. It is chaos, but at the same time, it is beautiful watching 120 people drafting fantasy baseball teams at the same time. 

About five days before the drafts, the leagues are randomly organized, placing each team in their leagues. This was mine:

You might notice the insanity of this league. It included Dalton Del Don (formerly) of Yahoo, Dustin McComas of Five Tool Baseball, Jeff Zimmerman of FanGraphs, Dave Potts of Roto Grinders (and former NFBC Main Event Overall Winner), Michael Govier of The Pallazzo Podcast, and Paul Sporer of FanGraphs. A league like this rarely includes more than one industry member and this one had seven and that doesn’t even account for some amazing high stakes players that aren’t in the industry.

The draft itself was wild. Paul and I were sitting across from each other, yelling obscenities every time one of us sniped the other. ADP was thrown out the window and we targeted the guys we wanted. At one point when I drafted Jose Soriano at pick 148 (only four years too early on him), I am pretty sure someone threw something at me. I left the draft feeling pretty happy and confident with my team, but more importantly, it was one of the most fun drafts I had ever been a part of.

By the end of June, I was in first place in the league. Scott Jenstad and I had been battling it out most of the season and I remember having a DM conversation with him on twitter discussing how competitive the league had been. He wished me luck in the league the rest of the way and I wished him luck in that league and in the other Main Event league we were in together. What I didn’t know was he would go onto win both of those leagues and come close to winning the Main Event Overall and I had already jinxed myself with one tweet:

In better news, Bryan Reynolds and Patrick Wisdom have my Main Event team 🚀📈🔥 pic.twitter.com/aAjxjzWBup

— Justin Mason (@JustinMasonFWFB) July 1, 2022

From the All-Star Break on, nothing I did worked out. If I streamed a pitcher, he got blown up. If I sat a hitter, he had a massive week while the players lineup went 0-for-4 every night it seemed. I was in first place in the league on July 3rd. By the time the season finished, I was in 14th place. 

I wish this story had a different ending, but the truth of the matter is some stories end poorly. I ended up doing deep dives on my teams to figure out what went wrong and you can read about this team here. One of the lessons I learned is that the season is long and if you are ahead of your competition, you need to stay vigilant to keep that lead intact. If you are behind them, you can still catch up, even if the season is half over. We are just a month in and if you are in first, keep working to keep yourself there. If you are in last, there is still plenty of time to catch up and win. We are still in small sample silliness mode and things will change, for better or worse. 

Let’s talk about some of the small samples on the offensive side of the game and if they mean anything. 

Drake Baldwin (30 Runs Scored) – Baldwin is league the Majors in runs scored through April. He has been hitting second all season for the hottest offense in baseball and hitting .307/.380/.504. There isn’t a ton of difference in his profile vs. 2025 outside of an improved launch angle, which is allowing him to hit for a bit more power. The average will likely come down to the .270-.280 range, but if the added power sticks around, he goes from being a high floor catcher to a superstar. 

Sal Stewart (29 RBIs) – Stewart is leading the Majors in RBIs which is almost as impressive as the rest of his stat line. He is hitting .288/.377/.586 with nine home runs and seven stolen bases. He is hitting the ball hard, but also sporting an 81.4% Z-Contact and a very aggressive approach in the zone with below average bat speed. The likelihood the average stays this high seems low, but the power and surprising speed will stick around and he is the obvious front runner for Rookie of the Year in the National League. 

Aaron Judge and Munetaka Murakami (12 Home Runs) – Ok, no one is surprised by Judge being at the top of the home run leaderboard, but Murakami has been fantastic thus far. The power for Murakami is off the charts, but there is a clear weakness in his game: breaking pitches. Murakami is hitting .162 against breaking pitches and eventually the league will begin to attack him differently. His Z-Contact is 70.7% and his swinging strike rate is 16%. There is going to be massive regression at some point if these numbers do not improve. 

Nasim Nuñez (13 Stolen Bases) – Nunez is leading the Majors in stolen bases so far, making my Bold Prediction on him seem possible. The problem is everything else. His percentiles in xSLG, avg exit velo, barrel percentage, hard hit percentage, and bat speed are all in the single digits. He makes enough contact, but so much of it is weak, he cannot get on base a ton through hits. He does walk at a double digit rate and his defense is elite, so he could keep his job, but he has more stolen bases than he does RBIs and almost more than he has runs scored which means he is nothing more than a rabbit unless he can unlock some power which feels unlikely.  

Ildemaro Vargas (.372 Batting Average)  – If you had given me 100 guesses on who would be leading the Major Leagues in batting average after the first month of the season, I would never have guessed Vargas. Vargas has always been able to make contact, but most of it was weak and on the ground prior to this season. This year he has raised his launch angle from 3.2 degrees to 7.9 which has in turn raised his line drive rate from 11% to 31.5%. This won’t continue, especially with a bat speed that is below league average. He can be a better version of what he has been in the past, but I assume that by the time we upside this list in June, he won’t be a part of the discussion.