The volatility of small sample sizes makes analysis at this early juncture of the fantasy baseball season as dangerous as it is tempting.

But even as we work to exercise temperance and avoid the kind of knee-jerk reactions that could trouble our fantasy fortunes in the long term, it's very much worth noting how different statistics stabilize early enough in a given sample to prove useful for larger-scale analysis.

One such statistic is hitter strikeout rate, which according to the research done by Baseball Prospectus' Russell Carlton, actually stabilizes as soon as 60 plate appearances.

It just so happens that most every-day MLB hitters are closing in on the 60-plate-appearance mark this week, so now seems like a good time to check in on seven such hitters whose strikeout-rate trends might encourage us to adjust our expectations for their fantasy production -- for better or for worse.