Atlanta Braves: Is Dansby Swanson an All-Star?
Atlanta Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson is in the middle of his breakout season, but is it enough to get him selected to the All-Star Game?
When he was drafted as the number one overall pick by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2015 MLB Draft, the expectation was that Dansby Swanson would be a quick mover throughout the Diamondbacks system and be an MLB player as soon as 2016.
Even when he, along with Ender Inciarte and Aaron Blair, were traded to the Atlanta Braves in December of 2015, it was still thought Swanson would be in Atlanta later in 2016, early 2017 at the latest.
Sure enough, Swanson debuted on August 17th in 2016 and since then, he has been a lightning rod for scrutiny; not living up to the expectations of being the top overall pick.
Throughout his nearly three years in the big leagues, Swanson has been a model of inconsistency.
He had a slash line of .302/.361/.442 in his month and a half of games in 2016, which left most excited about his future in Atlanta, but he regressed to a .232/.312/.324 line in 2017.
While his defense took off last season, the offense still lagged behind to a certain degree.
Swanson did hit 14 home runs and drove in 59 runs, but struggled to cut down the strikeouts (122) and did not walk much (44). As it turns out, there was a reason for the regressed output.
During last offseason, Swanson had surgery to clean out floating cartilage in his left wrist and the hope was a clean bill of health would go along way in getting Swanson’s offense up to his defense.
It was actually the combination of good health, plus visiting with Chipper Jones that has led to Swanson being one of the Braves best offensive players this season.
As of Friday, Swanson was second on the Braves in home runs (13), first in RBIs (43) and third in OPS (.818).
The homers and OPS rank second third among NL shortstops, while he is tied for first in RBIs.
He is doing the majority of his damage batting second, as he sits between Ronald Acuna and Freddie Freeman.
Now the question, as unthinkable as it might have been a year ago, is can Swanson be an All-Star?
Let’s take a look at the competition.