Atlanta Braves: Is the starting shortstop debate over now?
By Josh Mathews
Making the case for Dansby
We don’t need to analyze the past heavily. Swanson was a September call-up in 2016 and showed Atlanta Braves fans how we robbed the Arizona Diamondbacks in a trade where he gave up Shelby Miller for Dansby, Ender Inciarte and Aaron Blair.
In 2017 and 2018, Swanson was a disappointment, especially in 2017 where he hit just .236 with six home runs.
And then n 2018, he improved his power numbers to 14 home runs but still had a lackluster average and on-base percentage.
This season he improved even more and was one of the top offensive shortstops in the National League for a time. You could have actually argued his case to become a 2019 All-Star.
Dansby has improved. He’s gotten better. He’s grown offensively. That’s a reason to consider him.
Then, he got injured, and now, he’s clearly off.
Through September 25, he’s hitting just .178 (15-84) since his activation from the disabled list on August 26.
In that time, he’s hit no home runs and driven in just eight runs. (To get more analytical, check this one out.)
That’s with a four-hit performance against the Royals on Wednesday.
Most of his enhanced offensive skill set has seemingly come from a newfound ability to hit the ball the opposite way for power, as first discussed by MLB.com’s Mark Bowman way back in spring training.
Also, Swanson has not been very clutch this year. I can think back to a couple of moments where he seemed like that guy. But that guy seems to have left the building in 2019.
Over 119 at-bats with runners in scoring position, he’s hit just .184. One silver lining to that statistic is that seven of those 22 hits have been home runs.
Ramp it up to runners in scoring position with two out and his average dips down to .100. Two of his five hits are home runs in that situation.
Many are quick to say that Dansby is good defensively, even great defensively, and I’ve even seen it posted that Swanson is elite defensively — nope, not close.
This season, Swanson ranks 13th or 14th in most major advanced statistics on Fangraphs. That’s about as average as average gets. I’ll give you this, Swanson had a solid 2018 defensively, but not this year.