Spring training games start today. It's a good day as it puts us one step closer to the beginning of the major league baseball season.
As for fantasy baseball, draft season is in full swing. While some are participating in their first drafts this week, many others could be a few drafts in at this point. The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, run by Justin Mason, starts its slow draft on Sunday as well.
What a time to be alive.
Before diving in though, one area we all have to be cognizant of in our drafts is the home run category. Assuming it's a part of your standard 5X5 scoring, or even if a version of that is used like slugging percentage or OPS, power matters in some shape or form.
And homers have been rising in recent seasons, from 4,909 taters in 2015 up to 5,585 a season ago. As that commodity rises, you need plenty of guys that can bring the heat with the long ball. To hit homers, hitters need to get the ball in the air. And thanks to all the data at our disposal these days, we can use past years' fly-ball rates and home-run-to-fly-ball rates (HR/FB) to provide some context.
Below are those rates from the last four seasons:
| Season | FB | HR/FB |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 33.8% | 11.4% |
| 2016 | 34.6% | 12.8% |
| 2017 | 35.5% | 13.7% |
| 2018 | 35.4% | 12.7% |
This will be the first of a two-part series examining some outliers in home runs from a year ago -- an attempt to look at what hitters did last year and predict whether that output sustainable, bound to improve, or on the decline.
For part one, here are five hitters that could see a dip in their home run production this season.