Austin Riley, Cole Young, more fantasy baseball hitters who could be in for a power surge

I like home runs. I don't think I'm alone there. They're helpful for my fantasy teams, but also fun to watch.

So I thought it would be fun to dig into some hitters who should be hitting more home runs than they currently are. For that, I made a custom leaderboard. I looked at some stats that often lead to home runs: hard-hit rate, barrel rate, pull rate, HR/FB rate, bat speed, launch angle, and pull air rate.

Then I deleted any hitter who was clearly below average in each of the categories. I know this isn't an exact science because there are hitters who can hit home runs without elite barrel rates or hitters like James Wood who can mash home runs despite having the 9th-lowest pull rate among qualified hitters. Still, I was looking for hitters who were doing everything necessary to get home runs but still had a HR/FB rate that was below average.

I also created two separate leaderboards for hitters who had all the quality of contact metrics we wanted but didn't pull the ball enough or lift the ball enough, because that could give us even more hitters to look out for who could do a home run streak with a slight adjustment. At the end, I think we had an intriguing list of hitters who could see some positive home run regression. Some of these guys are already on your team, some are on the waiver wire, and others are just producing average results for other teams.