Wild MLB Stats That Don’t Make Sense to Start the 2025 Season

We’re only three weeks into the 2025 Major League Baseball season. As usual at this point in the season, some things look completely out of whack.

While some fan bases are pleased as punch with how their teams have come out of the gate, others are having apoplectic fits about early-season slumps. There are some topsy-turvy standings, but those will likely normalize as the season wears on.

Likewise, there are some early individual performances that have produced plenty of surprises — both good and bad. Let’s dig into some of the most wild stats we’ve seen so far, just a little more than 10 percent of the way through the MLB season.

Surprising Sluggers

Even this early in the season, you’d expect some familiar names to be topping the power leaderboards. If you pull up MLB’s home run leaders, you’ll see the usual suspects. Names like Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Mike Trout are scattered among the leaders in the early-going.

Even seeing Arizona Diamondbacks superstar Corbin Carroll, the Seattle Mariners’ Cal Raleigh and young power hitters like the Washington Nationals’ James Wood and Detroit Tigers’ Spencer Torkelson near the top isn’t even that surprising.

But there are some more surprising names sprinkled in at the top of the leaderboard.

It looks like former first-round pick Tyler Soderstrom is living up to his No. 1 prospect pedigree for the Athletics. With a major league-leading eight home runs in 18 games, the young first baseman is htting .324 with a 1.101 OPS thanks to his insane 20.4 percent barrel rate. His .706 slugging percentage isn’t even that much of an overshoot — he has a .665 xSLG!

Tommy Edman hit the first home run of the MLB season in the Tokyo Series and hasn’t looked back. With six homers, Tommy Tanks is doing more than acting as a versatile fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The 2024 NLCS MVP is leaning into elevating the ball with a 46.9 percent fly ball rate, a 91.6 mph average exit velocity and a 10.8 percent barrel rate. Keep in mind, Edman’s career high is 13 home runs, so he’s already almost halfway there.

San Francisco Giants designated hitter Wilmer Flores is another surprise, with six home runs through 18 games. With a career-high of 23 homers in 2023, it will be surprising to see him among the leaders in five months’ time. Even though he doesn’t impact the ball very hard, his career-high 9.3 percent barrel rate is paying off with a .515 slugging percentage and a league-leading 23 RBI.

Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm has hit more than 20 home runs only once in his injury-riddled career. That came last season when he hit 24. He has six so far in 2025. Life is sweet as a left-handed hitter at Yankee Stadium. Chisholm has hit all six of his home runs at home to left or left-center field. It’s not all the short porch, though, as he has an impressive 20.9 percent barrel rate.

Vladimir Guerrero’s Shocking Power Outage

Speaking of home runs, one name nowhere near the top of the leaderboard is the Toronto Blue Jays’ new $500-million man, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Somehow, it took him until April 16 to hit his first home run — off Atlanta Braves returning ace Spencer Strider, no less.

He’s slugging an uncharacteristic .389 through 19 games. His average exit velocity was down but is slowly creeping up closer to his career average of 92.8 mph. His 11.5 percent barrel rate is down from his 13.7 percent mark last year, but there appears to be an element of bad luck with a .535 xSLG.

Despite being only three weeks in to the season, Guerrero’s shocking power outage had been giving Blue Jays fans fits. With 30 or more homers in three of his last four seasons, he’s expected to carry the offense.

It’s difficult to know how much the contract negotiations were weighing on the 26-year-old Guerrero. Now that that’s settled, and he has his first homer out of the way, they should continue coming fast and furious.

Chris Sale’s Shockingly High ERA

Chris Sale’s season is going about as well as the Atlanta Braves’ 5-13 season. The veteran left-hander put together his first full healthy season in what seemed like forever last year, en route to winning the 2024 NL Cy Young. Now, the 36-year-old has crashed back to earth through his first four starts of 2025.

After posting a MLB-best 2.38 ERA last year, Sale is sporting a 6.63 mark with a 1.53 WHIP. That’s 14 earned runs on 25 hits through 19 innings. He still has the strikeouts, with 24, and has only issued four walks. However, he has allowed three or more runs in each of his outings.

The early numbers are jarring for a pitcher of Sale’s caliber, with a 3.07 career ERA. We should note that there might be an element of bad luck involved. He has a 3.65 FIP (fielding independent pitching), his 3.34 xFIP is even lower, and his xERA is 4.32.

He hasn’t seen a drastic drop in velocity, so time will tell if Sale can right the ship. Or, maybe Father Time has come for him.

Josh Naylor’s Newfound Love of Base Stealing

When the Cleveland Guardians traded first baseman Josh Naylor to the Diamondbacks in the offseason, many thought his offense would get a boost. He went from one of MLB’s toughest hitter’s ballparks in Progressive Field, to Chase Field, one of the friendliest.

We weren’t expecting the 27-year-old Canadian to become a prolific base stealer.

Okay, prolific might be a bit strong.

But on top of slashing .328/.403/.552 as part of a potent D-backs offense, Naylor has already swiped four bags. On a team that has Carroll (35 steals in 2024) and Jake McCarthy (25 steals in 2024), Naylor leads Arizona. Plus, he has yet to be caught, even with his 25.2 ft/s seventh percentile sprint speed.

Perhaps Naylor picked up some tips from his speedy teammates. Still, it doesn’t make sense that he’s leading the club and is well on his way to obliterating his career high of 10 steals.

Jackson Chourio’s Curious Lack of Walks

The Milwaukee Brewers’ Jackson Chourio earned his first walk of the season on April 15.

Usually, a walk wouldn’t be noteworthy. This one was. It was the young outfielder’s first free pass of the season, now 19 games into the campaign.

Chourio isn’t necessarily known for generating a ton of walks. His 6.8 percent walk rate in his debut season last year was below the 8.2 percent league average. Even so, he was among a very small group of players who had yet to walk in 2025 (Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson is the last qualified hitter left in that cohort).

Why did it take Chourio so long to draw his first walk?

Looking at swing decisions, Chourio is chasing out of the zone more often in 2025. Last year, the 21-year-old posted a 31.9 percent chase rate, just higher than the league average of 28.6 percent. This year, he has been swinging at pitches out of the zone at a 42.1 percent clip.

He’s also swinging a lot more in general so far this season. He has a 60 percent swing rate (48.8 percent in 2024) and a 77.3 percent zone swing rate (64.7 percent in 2024).

It will be interesting to see if Chourio’s early-season aggressiveness continues, or if he’ll settle back into being the same hitter who finished third in 2024 NL Rookie of the Year voting.