Atlanta Braves: Who is Dansby Swanson?
Dansby Swanson arrived, via trade and a year of minor league ball, in Atlanta and was greeted with exceedingly high expectations. Many fellow Atlanta Braves fans have grown impatient with our rookie shortstop’s, thus far, failure to meet them.
One thing I love about baseball is the culture of numbers. Better than any other sport, baseball uses numbers to translate what we see from players on the field into readily digestible morsels of information that we can use to evaluate and, ever importantly, compare players. Which brings us to Dansby Swanson…
Swanson is one of our players whose numbers, to this point, are not good, and many a Braves fan has grown restlessly worrisome over the lack of production our “future face” has offered.
Coming into today, June 4th, Swanson has a traditional “slash line” (batting average/home runs/RBI) of: .194/5/20
The 5 homers and 20 RBI are, actually, pretty good for any rookie just two months into his first full season in the show. However, the sub .200 batting average is what has defined his early career from an offensive perspective. Compounding the frustration over his lack of consistent hitting has been his 11 errors committed at a position where defense is a must…Also, it does not help that three years ago we had the best defensive shortstop the game has seen since the Wizard of Oz was doing back flips on that Gawd-Awful turf in St. Louis.
Most baseball fans will admit that most young players will struggle. Most baseball fans have enough sense to know that two full months into a player’s first full year in the big leagues is almost never a good representation of what that player will be over time.
Still, folks are hating on the pretty boy from Kennesaw, and I believe that is so for two reasons:
- The two things he was supposed to do immediately were hit for average and play solid defense.
And
- Because the “hypers” out there ran around telling Braves country that he was the next Derek Jeter.
The reality is that Dansby Swanson has been good everywhere someone has let him play ball, but there have been very few Derek Jeters in baseball’s long history. For this, I have always been uncomfortable with the Jeter comparison, but Swanson’s struggles have made me curious as to what sort of numbers Jeter put up through June of his first full Major League season.
My search also led me to another well know short stop who I believe, based on his body type and skill set, is a better example of what may be proper expectations for what Dansby Swanson could become.
Again, using only the traditional slash line: (cause what normal person really wants to talk about the difference between BABIP and XBABIP?) Dansby Swanson on June 4, 2017: .194/5/20
Derek Jeter through June 1996: .270/5/18
Mystery player through June 1987: .203/6/18
Like Swanson, Jeter got a cup of coffee in 1995, and through June 1996, his first full season, he hit .270/5/18. He also went on to win Rookie of the Year that season and amass a dossier of career numbers that include a lifetime slash of .310/260/1311 and over 3400 hits. I’m no Jeter lover, but those guys do not come around often. And, I remember 1996…The Yankees knew they had a good one, but no one was going on television and heaping the weight of expectation for numbers like that on the man.
Our mystery player also came up for a taste in 1986 before going full-time with the big club in 1987. His career slash is .295/198/960, and, as you can see from the numbers above, his struggles were very similar to Swanson’s through June of his first full season. Mystery player’s name…Barry Larkin.
I chose Jeter because I believe comparing anyone to Jeter early in their career is foolish, and I wanted to demonstrate that. I chose Larkin because, as my untrained eyes have watched Swanson’s infant big league career, that is who I have seen. Larkin was a very good major leaguer, is the kind of player I believe is an appropriate measuring stick for the type of expectation we put on Swanson, and just a cursory look at his numbers reveal that we should be patient with the kid.
The point is, most players that turn out really well struggle like this in the beginning. And, if you’re telling me that you would have kept Shelby Miller instead of trading for Ender Inciarte and a potential Barry Larkin, then I suggest you put your phone down during the games and actually watch some baseball.
That said, Swanson might do this for another year or so before fading into the abyss of “never were’s”…His history, and baseball history, suggest that is not a safe bet.
Next: Braves Previewing the lineup
One more thing…Derek Jeter committed 22 errors in 1996. Calm down, the glove will come around.