Atlanta Braves: What we need to see from Dansby Swanson in final week
What we need to see
There are honestly several things we need to see from Dansby Swanson in these last five games before we can feel confident about him going into the postseason.
More than anything, we just need to see him get his swag back.
As I’ve noted several times, I’ve been watching Dansby since he was at Vanderbilt and he’s always played with confidence.
That confidence has been lacking these last couple of days in particular with the pressure on him to produce or else.
We even saw it start to affect his play in the field on Sunday.
I need to see Dansby get that swag/confidence back in these final five games.
At the plate, it’s pretty simple, we need to see better at-bats. I don’t necessarily need to see him get a bunch of hits, I just need to see better at-bats.
Much like Austin Riley, we need to see him lay off that slider falling away and we need to see him put himself in better counts.
Related Story. What to expect from Riley in final week. light
According to FanGraphs, Dansby’s strikeout percentage has shot up to 31.5 percent since returning from the IL, while his walk percentage is at 15.7.
He’s also pulling nearly half the balls he’s put in play since coming back on August 26.
Swanson is still running into a bit of bad luck with a BABIP of .217 and with a hard contact percentage of 41.3.
But still, the most concerning thing is the poor at-bats leading to the high strikeout rate.
Before his injury, his strikeout percentage was 20.4 percent and he was pulling baseballs just 41.3 percent of the time.
In this final week, we need to see Dansby do a better job of getting into good counts, not striking out as much, and driving the ball the other way.
If he can do that then, whether it leads to hits or not, I’ll feel much better about Dansby going into the postseason.