Small Sample Sizes

I love baseball stats. I'm the nerd that will fool around with Fangraph leaderboards in my free time. So much in the game is quantifiable that you can paint a pretty good picture of the best players in baseball by just looking at certain numbers.

If you are a frequent reader of sites like Fangraphs one of the main points they try to get across is to not fall for the dreaded small sample size. Every year a player has a monster April and someone will crown them the next best thing and sure enough by seasons end the overall numbers are pedestrian. People will bombard the writers with questions about someone and most responses center around not trusting April stats.

All this popped in my head when I found this Josh Harrison Pro Debut parallel.

The blurb on the back of the card mentions that Josh got a promotion because of his excellent eye.  Here are Harrison's walk rates as a member of the Pirates.

2011  1.5%
2012  3.6%
2013  2.1%
2014  4%
2015  4.2%
2016  3.4%

Obviously enough data exists now to show that plate patience is a weak point in his game. This is not meant to be a knock on Harrison as he is still a very valuable player. It just shows where my mind goes when I read about stats on back of a card. Also, if you are reading Josh, it is ok to take a pitch :)

Thanks for reading.