Despite solid play at short with Hech, Dansby Swanson needs to hurry back

The injury bug seems to have come through this Atlanta Braves team. Unfortunately, it got ahold of a player that was on track to have a career-year in Dansby Swanson.

It really is a shame that Dansby Swanson wound up on the IL this season. His heel injury on July 23 was disappointing in so many ways. First off, his absence in the Atlanta Braves starting lineup left a hole that couldn’t be filled internally, which ended up resulting in the addition of Adeiny Hechavarria — who has performed admirably so far, by the way.

Secondly, and more importantly, Dansby Swanson was having the best season of his career.

Let’s start from the beginning

Swanson had a nice little 38-game taste of the big leagues in 2016 and actually played well in that initial season, batting .302 and finishing with 10 XBH on his way to 0.8 fWAR. Not bad for a little over a month’s worth of games.

Then in 2017, his first full season in the majors, Swanson struggled mightily to the tune of a .232 batting average and a 64 wRC+, good for -0.3 fWAR.

It was rather apparent that the Braves’ shortstop couldn’t hit a breaking ball, and big league pitchers kept the curveballs and sliders coming at a frequent pace.

The 2018 season featured a breakthrough somewhat, as Swanson started to resemble some good habits regarding plate-discipline, coupled with some outstanding defense at shortstop.

But a wrist injury got in the way of him fully developing into what we all expected. Still, Swanson finished with a surprising home run total of 14, stole 10 bases and posted 1.8 fWAR, though his WAR total was propped up from his 11.8 Def (defensive WAR). He slashed just .238/.304/.395 in 136 games last season.

Swanson’s 2019 season

Coming into the 2019 season, Dansby Swanson had a solid foundation to build from. This was set to be a season in which he’d carry over those positive strides from last year and really focus on living up to the ultra-high expectations that come with being a first-round/first pick in the 2015 MLB Draft.

Other than a decline from an elite defensive WAR (11.5 Def) in 2018 to an around average one this season (0.5 Def), Swanson has made huge strides in just about every aspect of his game.

And with the flakiness of quantifiable metrics on defense, who really knows if he’s been worse in the field this season — also FanGraphs supposedly doesn’t account for shifts in their defensive metrics, something that’s heavily deployed these days. As far as the eye test goes, Swanson has been fine.

First of all, Swanson is hitting the ball harder in general, going from a 35.6% hard-hit rate last year, to a 42.6% rate in 2019.

A 7 percent boost is pretty substantial and is very much responsible for his 40-point increase in wOBA from 2018-2019 (.293 to .333). That’s pretty simple: hit the ball harder and better things will happen.

Another big improvement by Swanson is his plate-discipline, one thing we’ve all seen this season. If you thought he’s been much better at laying off junk pitches in 2019, than you would be 110% correct, as Swanson has lowered his O-Swing% (out-of-zone swing%) by nine percentage-points (36.5% down to 27.5%).

Pitchers have continued to throw the sliders and curves that tail out of the zone, thinking he’ll just swing at ’em like he did last season… except this year he’s not.

Swanson has seemingly discovered that breaking balls, especially ones that are out of the strike zone, are difficult to do anything with. Look for the fastball and wait until you get it.

An approach at the plate

Proof that Swanson has obtained a full understanding of solid plate-discipline is illustrated by the fact that he’s been able to cut down on his chases, but doing so without substantially reducing his swing-rate overall.

In fact, Swanson is swinging more at balls in the strike zone, bumping his Z-Swing% up by roughly 3% (68.7% up to 71.6%). This is important because often times hitters that are struggling with too many chases will stop swinging altogether in hopes to stop swinging at the bad pitches. But as we know, you can’t hit the ball without swinging.

Over correcting can sometimes lead to even worse habits, but it seems Swanson has avoided that, as his overall swing rate (swings at both balls and strikes) has remained the same since his overly aggressive 2018 season.

So he’s hitting the ball harder while swinging less at balls and more at strikes… very nice.

There’s still hope

The good news regarding Swanson’s absence is that it’s almost over. Hopefully his return comes sooner than originally expected, as the initial timeline was a return date of September. He played in Rome on Thursday night, the first game of his rehab-assignment:

The development of Swanson has been, at times, frustrating and perhaps slow. But, in my opinion, there’s no doubt that this season is finally the year it all comes together for him.

As a shortstop, the expectations should’ve never been too high offensively, but it always felt like he could do a little bit more at the plate. Given the improvements he has made so far in 2019, it appears that Swanson has not only lived up to expectations, but could possibly exceed them as an above-average shortstop.

At 25 years old and with three more seasons of team control, an above-average shortstop is plenty worth the growing pains that Swanson went through in his previous seasons.

Last season and the season before may have seemed like years of failing for Dansby Swanson, but the first 100 games of his 2019 season has made up for it in full.