There’s still roughly 85-90% of the baseball season to go, and yet people are already judging Major League Baseball teams and players; a nonsensical decision.

Baseball is a large sample sport. There needs to be more than a week or two of information available to have an understanding of a team or player. And even that’s not enough at times. 

But yet approaching the three-week mark of the 2025 season, people are ready to call it quits on Team A or Player B. Or say Team C has the makings of a championship contender and Player D is on his way to stardom. 

None of it makes sense.

This is a sport that can’t be watched through a microscope. Watching and judging baseball with a hyperfocus is dangerous. It’s unsustainable. People drive themselves crazy doing so.

It’s understandable if Braves fans are upset at the club’s slow start. I get why people are excited about the Padres’ hot start. Alec Bohm’s struggles are allowed to be frustrating for Phillies fans. Logan O’Hoppe has started 2025 on fire, and Angels fans should absolutely enjoy that.

But the Braves don’t stink. The Padres aren’t the best team in baseball. Bohm won’t struggle all year. And O’Hoppe will regress.

Or maybe Atlanta will have a hard time winning games. Maybe San Diego is the real deal. This could be a bad year for Bohm. It’s possible that O’Hoppe will take steps forward this year.

There’s no way of knowing. Either way. We aren’t even at the end of April yet. Now is not the time to make sweeping judgments.

A year ago, the Mets were 24-33 on June 1. From that date forward, they finished the year 65-40, good enough for the highest winning percentage in baseball. New York made it all the way to the NLCS.

Last year, the Cubs entered May 18-12, one of the best records in the NL. They didn’t make the postseason.

In 2024, Nick Castellanos was one of the worst hitters in baseball through the season’s first month. Castellanos hit .193/.258/.263 through the end of April. His .521 OPS was 10th-worst among qualified hitters. He finished the year posting a .793 OPS over the final five months. He was one of the Phillies’ best hitters during that period.

CJ Abrams had a .295 average for the Nationals at the end of April last year. His .992 OPS was eighth among qualified hitters. From May 1 through the end of the season, the shortstop hit .234. His .688 OPS in that stretch was 111th out of 136 qualified batters.

Those are all examples of larger sample sizes than we currently have at this point in the baseball calendar still not being enough to tell us how things would unfold. So there’s no way we can draw any conclusions from the even smaller quantity of data and numbers we have right now.

It’s hard to pinpoint where this concept comes from, feeling as though this time in the season is a great time to be hypercritical. It’s possible the crowd doing so is a minority of the baseball world that’s just being louder than the majority. But that doesn’t make it any less pointless.

It’s okay to be upset. It’s fine to be happy or excited. Fans are fans; they’re fanatics. They aren’t supposed to be the most rational people. But it’s important that don’t get too out of touch.

Baseball teams and players need time. It’s not smart to feel as though we understand how a club’s or player’s season will go right now.

Relax a bit. And enjoy the games, as best you can. Now is not the time to judge baseball teams or players.

For comments/questions about this story DM us on Instagram @TheWhitSports or email sports@thewhitonline.com