Dansby Swanson 2.0

Dansby Swanson is having a rough first full year in the majors. The former number one overall pick shot up through the minors last year, some say prematurely, and had quite the impressive 6-week debut with Atlanta. Combine that solid performance on the field with an already aggressive marketing campaign featuring him off the field and the 23-year-old started the 2017 season with some lofty expectations.

Unfortunately for Dansby, those expectations proved to be a bit unrealistic as he struggled basically from day one this year. While there have been a few fleeting bright spots, overall, it’s been a disappointing season for the rookie SS and it reached its peak on July 27^th when the Braves demoted Swanson back to AAA Gwinnett. 

These we’re his numbers at the time of his demotion:

As you can see, while it’s a rough thing to have to go through, a demotion was certainly warranted. Swanson had produced a -0.4 WAR up to the point in the season and for the season, had been one of the worst players in baseball.

But Dansby is a good kid with one of the best attitudes you’ll ever see on a young player and he took the demotion in stride. Said all the right things, went down to Gwinnett and got to work. And because baseball is baseball and weird things happen, Swanson was back in the show not even 2 weeks later. His replacement, Johan Camargo, was running out to take his position when he tripped over the first base line, hurting his knee and forcing a trip to the DL. Once again Swanson found himself in the position he started the season in, the starting SS in Atlanta.

And it doesn’t look like he has any interest in giving it up.

Here are his numbers since returning on August 9^th:

The production numbers are great obviously but the BB and K numbers are what jump out to me. When I wrote about Dansby earlier this year I noted the big red flag in his profile was the amount he strikes out relative to how little power he produces. A 23% K rate with a sub .100 ISO isn’t a profile that’s going to work. Not for a player who can’t make up that difference in value with all worldly defense. Dansby is a solid defender at SS but he needs his bat to be a valuable player in the majors. And the 14% K rate/.152 ISO he’s run since being back up looks a lot more like the profile of a solid everyday player, if not more.

And these numbers aren’t just the result of some better luck. Dansby is visibly and measurably making better contact. When he was demoted his Avg Exit Velocity sat at 87 mph. Since he’s been back, that number is up to 91 mph. That's a significant jump. And dropping your K rate by over 10% while adding 4 mph to your EV is enough to get my attention. And it's not just how he's hitting the ball but where. Swasnon has found the center of the diamond again. Before he was sent down this was his spray heatmap:

And since he’s been back:

For someone who sees as many sliders on the outside corner or just off the plate as Swanson does, staying up the middle and not rolling over those pitchers is paramount to any type of success. Early on in his return, he's been much more likely to either lay off those pitches all together or hit them where they're pitched. And the results speak for themselves.

To be clear, this is 55 PA’s worth of data and 55 PA’s worth of data is in no way conclusive. He could go back to being the same mess he was before and we could be talking about a profile that doesn’t work again. But this is all we have to go on at the moment and there at least seems to be some improvements. And not just in the results but in underlying data as well. We’ll continue to monitor all of this obviously and see where he goes but so far, it’s encouraging.