SARASOTA, Fla. – When they’re entrenched as the Braves’ middle-infield duo, perhaps two or three years down the road, no one will remember the day that Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies played together for the first time.
For the record it happened Wednesday, when the Braves’ top two position-player prospects started a spring-training game against the Baltimore Orioles, with 22-year-old Swanson at shortstop and 19-year-old Albies at second base, his first start at any position other than shortstop.
Albies had a big day, going 3-for-6 with a two-run single in the first inning and a leadoff homer in the seventh in an 11-4 win. Swanson was 0-for-5 with three groundouts, a strikeout and an infield pop-up.
The swapped positions in the sixth inning, Swanson going to second base and Albies to shortstop.
Albies, who turned 19 in January, has a .328 average and .395 OBP with 51 stolen bases and 11 triples in 155 games over two minor league seasons, including .310 with a .368 OBP in 98 games last season at low-A Rome. Baseball Prospectus rates the undersized – he’s generously listed at 5 feet 9 and 150 pounds – Curacao native as the No. 3 prospect in the organization.
The Arizona Diamondbacks made Swanson the No. 1 overall pick in the June 2015 draft out of Vanderbilt, and he played only 22 games in rookie ball last season after his debut was pushed back when he got hit in the face by a fastball thrown by another Arizona prospect in live batting practice.
The Diamondbacks traded him to Atlanta in the December Shelby Miller deal, and Swanson is rated the Braves’ No. 1 prospect by most evaluators.
The Braves plan to have both Swanson and Albies play shortstop for their respective minor league teams in 2016, and eventually the organization will switch one to second base. It’s unclear how long the Braves will keep them with the major league team in spring training before sending them to minor league camp, but Gonzalez plans to play them plenty while they’re around — and to have each of them play some shortstop and some second base.
“I’ve seen enough, watching them take ground balls for three days, that I have no idea who’s better (at shortstop).” Gonzalez said. “I think the plan in the minor leagues (this season) is just let them play (shortstop), and then figure out who the better shortstop is. At the end of the summer our minor league people will decide who’s better, but I’ve got a feeling that they’ll come back and say, ‘We don’t know.’ It’s a good decision to have to make, and I don’t think you can go wrong either way.”
