Atlanta Braves: How long should the leash be for Dansby Swanson in 2019?
By Clint Manry
The Bad
As I mentioned in the beginning of this piece, this isn’t my opinion of Dansby Swanson. While I feel like he has contributed in several areas for the Braves, the truth of the matter is there have been some areas that he hasn’t played well.
We saw on the previous page how well Swanson has done in specific situations of games, and that’s all fine and dandy, but there comes a time when he must be able to hit well in all situations, or at least most of them.
I’m not going to just list how bad his batting-average and homer total is, we can all see that on various player-pages on the internet. It’s way too simple to just look at standard numbers on a stat sheet and say that he hasn’t played well. We all know what those numbers look like.
I’m going to focus more on why his numbers look bad. What are some things that he isn’t doing well, that in turn, are making his numbers suffer. Their are several things that’s hurting Swanson, but I’m just gonna look at a few.
Fangraphs offers a stat called Weighted on-base Average (wOBA). It’s the catch-all hitting stat for hitters. Basically, wOBA takes all aspects of hitting and puts it together to form a comprehensive average stat, very similar to OPS except the hits and walks are not created equal in wOBA.
Over Swanson’s career, he has a wOBA of .290. According to Fangraphs, here are the ratings for wOBA:
.400 wOBA (Excellent)
.370 wOBA (Great)
.340 wOBA (Above average)
.320 wOBA (Average)
.310 wOBA (Below average)
.300 wOBA (Poor)
.290 wOBA (Awful)
I think you can see where Swanson falls on the list, and last I checked “awful” was definitely not good. As a whole, hitting just hasn’t been Swanson’s MO.
One problem with Swanson’s hitting has been the constant groundballs. Since the 2017 season, Swanson has the eighth-highest GB% by MLB shortstops, with a 45.0% ground ball rate.
Some hitters can get away with a high rate of ground balls, but for some it is not a good batted-ball strategy. While Swanson has some speed, he isn’t Trea Turner out there.
Swanson also hasn’t displayed the greatest ability to make contact. Since 2017, Swanson’s contact % is a measly 77.0% (sixth lowest among MLB shortstops). Making contact is pretty important in hitting… well duh!
When watching Atlanta Braves games on TV, I think we are all aware at how Swanson struggles at hitting that off-speed pitch low and outside. It seems like almost every time it’s a swing-and-a-miss for him, but it’s not just those off speed pitches, it’s all of them.
Fangraphs has a stat called Pitch Value that lists the number of runs above-average a batter was against certain pitches. Obviously positive numbers being good and negative being bad.
Here are Swanson’s ratings against off-speed pitches from the 2017 and 2018 season with his ranking among all MLB shortstops:
Slider (-15.1) 4th-lowest
Curveball (-3.8) 3rd-lowest
He has to learn how to hit breaking pitches if he wants to ever be a successful hitter in the Majors. In his MLB career Swanson has a 66 wRC+ against curveballs and a 27 wRC+ against sliders. Until he makes the proper adjustments, pitchers will be throwing those pitches all day long to Swanson.
In Summary
The first two full seasons for Dansby Swanson probably haven’t gone quite the way he hoped. He’s had trouble with Major League pitching and has had setbacks due to injuries.
His inability, so far, to make the proper adjustments with his approach has resulted in some poor numbers across the board. Also, his ground ball tendencies have really hampered any chance of success with the contact that he has made.
His spot as the eighth-hitter in the everyday lineup will be tough to climb out of, as pitchers know that their are certain pitches that Swanson just cannot seem to hit. It’s these pitches that he must gain skill at hitting if he is to ever sustain any success at the Major League level.