While baseball season is months away, we're only a few weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training and the excitement for baseball season really kicking off. It means that the early work for fantasy baseball drafts starts to kick off, but people get busy and getting into the research takes time, so we do it for you! In this series, we'll look at potential sleepers and bounceback candidates amongst hitters and then later against pitchers, stay tuned for the pitchers piece coming out later in the week.

So let's take a look at four hitters whose numbers indicate a bounceback is coming and could lead to some draft day bargains in your fantasy leagues.

Joe Panik, Second Base, San Francisco Giants

2016 BABIP: .245

2015 BABIP: .330

BABIP can be weighed depending on the hitter. Power hitters typically have a lower batting average on balls in play often because they are slower, hit a lot of fly balls and strikeouts, walks and a low average typically keep down their BABIP, whoch makes sense. But for quicker, contact-driven hitters, it's more usual to say a BABIP hovering around .300-plus depending on what quality of hitter they are.

Before the 2016 season, Panik sat in the thick of the Giants' lineup as a high on-base player who could generate solid contact and obviously get on base to provide run-scoring opportunities. 651 at bats is a limited sample size at the major-league level in two seasons, but evidence existed of his potentiasl. For a second baseman who didn't cost you much if anything, he helped keep your batting average up and at a second base position that is top heavy then left with question marks, he allowed you to focus at other positions to boost up with power and RBIs.

But in 2016, while we saw more power from Panik with 10 home runs, his BABIP sat below the basement. A near .100 point drop from one season to the next goes beyond regression, it's evidence of a player who had some serious bad luck in the 2016 season. It's not that he made a lot of soft contacts, a large majority of his contact to the ball was medium or hard contact, per FanGraphs. Even if you attribute some of this to more flyballs, which is true as his flyball percentage jumped five points, plenty of it speaks to luck.

In a strong Giants' lineup, a healthy Panik should have another opportunity to get on base, steal some bases and score some runs. 10 home runs may be his ceiling, which certainly falls short of the elite group, but if he can give you 80 runs, 60 RBIs, 7-10 HRs and a .350 on-base percentage with 5-10 steals, you could have a top-15 second baseman in fantasy at a very low ADP come draft time.

Jason Heyward, Outfield, Chicago Cubs

2016 HR/FB: 4.8 percent

2015: HR/FB: 12 percent

Heyward was the star of the offseason last year. He signed a mega contract with the Chicago Cubs and poised for greatness in the Windy City with the talent around him in the lineup. The hype existed, a potential 20-20 season was there and people had him as a top-60 overall fantasy player in many preseason rankings.

How quickly things changed as Heyward was a disaster at the plate last season. He carried a .230/.306/.325 triple-slash line last season with a WRC+ of 72, a significantly below league average outfielder by most numbers. He wasn't striking out at an unusually high rate, but he wasn't drawing many walks and with an isolated power (ISO) below .100 and a wOBA below .300, no positive production existed.

Now. he's barely cracking the top 250 of rankings, a mammoth fall for a player in just a single year. But what caused Heyward to completely fall out?

The good news from 2016? Heyward's flyball percentage jumped from 23.5 percent to 33.3 percent in a year. He got the ball in the air, which would seem like a good thing with the wind in Chicago. But his hard-contact percent dropped three percentage points and his soft contact percentage jumped five points. It has to relate to his swing mechanics, something that he has hopefully changed this offseason to get back to generating more velocity on his swings and off the bat.

Heyward is not a five percent HR/FB ratio guy, he's better than a .094 isolated power. Those numbers are what you should expect and see from Jose Iglesias or Adeiny Hechavarria. Heyward will never be a 20-plus percent HR/FB guy, but his career has shown he can certainly be in the 10-14 range.

That jump is easily the difference between seven home runs and 13-17 home runs. A jump in batting average after a career worst .266 BABIP to closer to the career range of .280-.300. That can easily push him back into the range of a potential 15-15 player with 60-plus RBIs is much closer to a top-120 fantasy player, which would far surpass where you'll find Heyward in the rankings right now.

Gregory Polanco, Outfield, Pittsburgh Pirates

Career BABIP: .294

2016 2nd Half BABIP: .235

Polanco was a near consensus fantasy breakout pick last year and in the early showing he proved why. In the first half of the season, Polanco's numbers were outstanding with a .213 isolated power, 128 wRC+, .287 batting average and a 71/38 K/BB ratio. The 20-20 season everyone wanted came together and he delivered on all the promise.

Things went poorly to say the least in the second half of the season. His ISO dropped only 20 points to .194 as the power mostly remained, but the on-base numbers sank. Polanco's wOBA dropped from .361 to .289 from the first half to the second half, his wRC+ sank more than 40 points to 80 and his walk percentage dropped from 11 percent to 6.2 percent.

Even more surprisingly, his first half BABIP of .333 sank 100 points in the second half. It is extremely abnormal from his career .294 BABIP and given his young age where progression is expected, was an even bigger drop from the potential he showed in the first half of the season.

There's once again 20-20 potential here, in addition to 80/80 runs and RBIs. Those numbers would put him right near the top-18 fantasy outfielder output and if Andrew McCutchen can have a bounceback season, Polanco will have even more support in the lineup to put up better numbers and see better pitches.

Marcell Ozuna, Outfield, Miami Marlins

Career BABIP: .318

Career HR/FB: 12.3 percent

2016 2nd Half BABIP: .229

2016 2nd Half HR/FB: 9.1 percent

Ozuna is another young outfielder who people had high expectations for before the 2016 season. They are actually quite similar in the first half-second half drop off. Before the All Star Break, Ozuna had an outstanding 137 wRC+, .377 wOBA and put up a strong ISO (.226) with 17 home runs. Everything had come together, the 25-plus home run season was on the verge of happening, now another top fantasy . outfielder in Miami emerged.

Then it all fell apart. That outstanding wRC+ sank 70 points, his wOBA plummeted more than 100 points to .264 and his ISO fell 90 points to .132. Those numbers would make you think it was a completely different player, especially when you compare the 17.5 percent HR/FB in the first half to 9.1 percent in the second half.

The HR/FB in the first half was bound to drop, that's closer to a top-30 power hitter in baseball which Ozuna is not. But he does have better power potential than the 9.1 percent HR/FB ratio he had in the second half and his career .318 BABIP and .349 BABIP in the first half are closer to what he is than his .229 BABIP in the second half.

What speaks even further to Ozuna's weird second half is that he actually cut down on his striekout percentage and there was just a slight drop off in his hard-hit ball percentage (1.5 percent), while his soft-contact percentage actually dropped a few percentage points.

I'm all in on Ozuna right now, especially in leagues with individual outfield spots where center field has separated tiers. The progress he has made showed in the first half of the season and his career previous has shown the second half numbers are much more of an outlier. You may not get 17 home runs in the first half, but you could see 25 home runs total more evenly spread out with a .330 OBP and 70/70 RBIs and runs