THREE-YEAR HOME RUN TOTALS: A TEASER

Spring games are underway; it's now officially permissible to indulge in fanboy fantasies concerning your favorite team. (Even the Astros and the Marlins. And yes, even the Royals.) However, as you can see, Amanda Knox is not too keen on the Mariners' prospects.

So in the spirit of all that, let's kick off a little series of posts about three-year home run totals. Are you surprised to discover that only one man (Miguel Cabrera) has hit more than 100 homers over the past three seasons? Oh, come on, don't be so jaded--admit it, it's startling. And so is the fact that he has a 20-HR lead over the next guy on the list.

Chris Davis notwithstanding, big HR exploits are in a down cycle. And our other chart here brings that point home for you--it shows the number of hitters with three-year HR totals of 100+ over the last twenty-five years, beginning with 1989-91.

You can see the spike, the decline, the modest uptick--and the crashdown in 2011-13 to levels that are quite similar to those in 1989-91.

Now 2012-14 will probably bring a higher number of 100+ guys to its final list. Over the past two seasons, Cabrera and Davis have 88 and 86 HRs respectively, so they're solid bets to be over 100 when 2014 comes to an end.

Additionally, Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Dunn have 78 and 75 in 2012-13 respectively, so they also have a pretty good chance to join the "100+ club."

We'll go deeper into these numbers in tomorrow's installment.