MILWAUKEE – Dansby Swanson was struggling like he’d never struggled before, so the rookie shortstop had an idea last week. He asked Rob Smith, the Braves’ manager of baseball video operations, if he could get him some video of Swanson hitting two or three years ago at Vanderbilt University.
No problem, Smith said. He got video that Braves scouts had on Swanson before the 2015 draft, when the Diamondbacks took him with the No. 1 overall selection.
Swanson noticed a small difference in his swing, took it to Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, and they went to work in the batting cages, first at Citi Field in New York last week and then at Miller Park in Milwaukee, where Swanson had two walks and lined out to center field Friday, then hit a home run in his first multi-hit game of the season Saturday in an 11-3 Braves rout that featured three Matt Kemp home runs.
“I showed Seitz, and it wasn’t like a major adjustment by any means because I’ve always hit the same,” Swanson said late Saturday, “(but) it just clicked, seeing that something was off — like, that makes perfect sense — and I’ve been working on it the past couple of days ever since we saw that video. Definitely happy with where we’re going.”
After hitting .138 through 19 games and going 6-for-52 (.115) with no extra-base hits, two walks, 15 strikeouts and a .264 OPS in 14 games through Thursday, Swanson went 2-for-7 with a home run, two walks, one strikeout and a 1.159 OPS in the first two games of the Brewers series before Sunday.
“Dansby is showing some signs,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said following Saturday’s win, the fourth consecutive for the Braves. “After some good at-bats (Friday) night, it’s nice to see him have something to show for it tonight. He’s been working really hard, so I was very happy for him. (Friday) night was a good steppingstone. There was a lot of positive things in that game last night from him, and it was good to see him kind of get rewarded for some hard work tonight.”
Swanson hit .302 with a .361 OBP, 11 extra-base hits and an .803 OPS in 38 major league games last season after he was called up from Double-A in August, so the Braves weren’t concerned that his slow start this season was anything more than that — a slow start.
They were confident that their top-rated prospect and the hometown guy they built ad campaigns around would get going sooner or later this year.
“Yeah, for sure,” said Kemp, who, along with fellow Braves veteran Freddie Freeman, talked with Swanson several times during his slump to make sure the rookie maintained his confidence and kept things in perspective. “It’s always good to see (what Swanson did Saturday). Hopefully that’ll get him going. He started out slow, but he’s still a great hitter. We’ve all struggled at times. He’s still a great hitter.
“Right now he’s not clicking, but (Saturday) he did a great job, and that can definitely boost his confidence and get him going.”
Playing games at the major league level every day, even experience players can have a problem develop with their swing or pitching delivery, something that creeps in so slowly that it’s not noticed until a slump deepens and a player or coach takes a step back and looks closely to see if something has changed.
For Swanson, a call to the team’s video guru helped Swanson and Seitzer notice a little something that hadn’t been obvious before and probably wouldn’t be to anyone else watching. Swanson didn’t go into details publicly other than to say it was a change he hadn’t noticed until he watched the old video for comparison.
“Rob gave me some video from me at school, when I was at (Vanderbilt),” Swanson said. “I looked at it and kind of got some positivity going, got a little better feeling about myself and was able to feel like I had my swing back. I had felt like I was searching for something, and watching that video I felt that it kind of put me back on track to where I needed to be.”
