Smaller Samples Actually Most Accurate: Fuld

TAMPA BAY (Bottom of the Fourth) - Many expected the Tampa Bay Rays to regress in 2011 after losing stars Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena to free agency and Evan Longoria to an early-season injury, but the team is currently sitting second in the AL East thanks to some unlikely contributors, chief among them the previously unheralded Sam Fuld.

While early-season success is often dismissed as a small sample-size fluke, Fuld doesn't believe this to be logical. "I took a statistics class in university," the Stanford grad told Bottom of the Fourth, "and these stat geeks have it backward. The smaller the sample, the more accurate."

Fuld elaborated, explaining that the "binomial nature" of the "central limit theorem" produces a "chirality" that makes it seem as if larger samples are more predictive, but that this is simply a red herring. Upon observing the blank stares on the faces of the media throng surrounding him, Fuld aborted his attempt at explanation, instead asking reporters to "just trust me. I went to Stanford."

Fuld's teammates have taken to calling him 'Professor'