Braves players who will be critical in the second half of 2021
Dansby Swanson
We’ll start with Dansby. Following a breakout 2020 in which he had career highs in stats such as batting average (.274), OPS (.809), and wRC+ (116, 100 being the average for MLB players), it looked as if we were about to see the former No. 1 overall pick from Vanderbilt start coming into his own with the bat after his first few big league seasons were up and down at the plate.
However, in 2021, Swanson sports a .243 batting average with 102 strikeouts, a 28.2% K rate. The 102 strikeouts have him tied for sixth in the majors for most strikeouts by any hitter.
He also had this rough stretch of games dating back to June:
#Braves' Dansby Swanson is 11-for-60 (.183) w/ 2 HR, 4 RBI, 7 walks and 20 strikeouts in his past 17 games. He's got the third-most strikeouts (93) in the NL behind Javier Baez and Eugenio Suarez.
— David O'Brien (@DOBrienATL) July 3, 2021
It hasn’t all been bad for Dansby though, as he does have 15 home runs on the year (more than fellow NL shortstops Trevor Story and Francisco Lindor), and will likely finish with over 20 at his current rate. He has also had some defensive gems this year with his heads-up play at shortstop.
https://twitter.com/BravesOnBally/status/1411139247768276996
Swanson did finish the first half of the season going 9-for-19 at the plate, a promising sign after the rough month he had, and he is known for coming up with some timely hitting over his career, especially in late innings (something Chip Carey reminds us of a lot). He will need to build off of that hot streak in the second half of the season to help replace the production left by Acuña.