MLB first baseman tiers: Position hit with widespread power outage

It might be hard to remember, but there used to be a time when the typical big league game featured more hits than strikeouts. No, really. In fact, it just happened in 2017, before the trendlines for hits and whiffs crisscrossed in a grotesque fashion last year.

The big story from 2017, if you recall, was the record 6,105 dingers that flew out of ballparks, 412 more than any other season in baseball history. The biggest source of all those home runs was first basemen. According to league positional data from Baseball Prospectus, first basemen hammered 962 homers that year. The positional data goes back to 1950, and 2017 is the only season in that span in which a position group homered more…