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The reasons vary – small sample sizes, smaller ballparks, Arizona’s thin, dry air, players who wear No. 83 getting far too much playing time – but the bottom line is spring training stats are not necessarily indicators of future success or failure.

And even though we know this, we still can’t help but get sucked in when a player is popping off a bunch of homers before the season starts. 

This year’s spring leader in homers is Kris Bryant, and we already know how fantasy owners feel about him. Even without his spring barrage, he’d be high on draft lists, but after slugging nine homers and hitting .425, he’s now being drafted as an upper-tier 3B despite starting the year in the minors. 

Consider Bryant a special case, though. Let’s look at the rest of this spring’s HR leaderboard: 

There are some players on here we expect to hit a bunch of homers (Bautista, Cespedes, Donaldson, Puig) and some names that make us do a double-take (Canha, Hernandez, Szczur). Not much changes with those players in terms of draft value. The guys in the middle (Zunino, Arenado, Pederson, Cuddyer, Martinez, Pearce) are the ones who could see their prices inflated on draft day. 

But should they? Check out the spring leaders in HRs the past three seasons:

2014

2013

2012

Clearly, there are hits and misses, and most of the hits were players you’d expect to hit (Stanton, Trumbo, Bautista, etc.). To be fair, there were also some guys whose big springs portended breakout/comeback seasons (Brown, Gattis, Dunn), but be it because of injuries, time spent in the minors, or a simple lack of production, many players couldn’t carry over their spring success into the regular season.

Going back to this year’s leaderboard, it’s certainly possible – maybe even likely – that one of the “in-the-middle” guys will have a big season. A breakout from Arenado is the most likely, but there’s reason to believe that Pearce or Martinez could build on last year’s respective breakouts or that Pederson could mash in his first season with the Dodgers. 

Ultimately, though, the homers they’ve hit this spring don’t necessarily mean much. We already knew all are talented, so a hot spring shouldn’t be enough to significantly raise their respective prices on draft day.

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