The shelf life of a phenom can be buttermilk brief. Yesterday’s prodigy is today’s social-media dartboard. Just ask Dansby Swanson.
A year ago at this time, the Braves were putting their then 23-year-old shortstop’s young face on anything that was stationary for more than a minute. A veteran of all of 127 minor league games, with another whole 38 games of MLB service time in 2016, Swanson was rushed into the void that was the Braves’ marketing strategy, becoming a franchise focal point before anything about his career was in focus. They were treating baseball like it was a boy band, despite any evidence the two can work off the same overnight schedule.
Ah, but now, just a season later, his spot as the next-big-thing – position-player division – has been usurped. The Most Heralded One, outfielder Ronald Acuna, is on ice in Gwinnett till at least mid-April. And don’t sleep on another who plays a few steps to Swanson’s left, second baseman Ozzie Albies. Train all wild-eyed optimism in those directions for a few minutes.
Swanson’s not even undisputed captain of the Braves’ all-curls team, not since they went out and acquired another North Georgian, utility guy and serviceable Swanson stunt double, Charlie Culberson.
The real kick is not when a fan confuses the utility guy for the phenom, but the other way around.
“That’s happened,” Swanson said, “I’ll never tell (Culberson) that, but that’s happened.”
While Swanson and Acuna are two young players on a similar hurry-up plan, they are separated by different languages, and the interaction between them was limited this spring.
Acuna’s mere presence in camp, though, was a blessing of sorts. Last year it was Swanson drawing the laser-gaze of all those fixated on a better future for the Braves. All that hope gets heavy. It can be a relief to have someone share the load.
“Obviously that can be part of it,” Swanson concedes, explaining a more sedate spring.
“(Acuna) is a tremendous talent. He’s pretty special to watch. I get caught watching him sometimes, too. He is remarkable,” Swanson said, before shifting into advice mode. “I hope everyone allows him to be him and do what he does best, rather than cloud that vision. Hopefully he can fight through that because it’s bound to happen sooner or later.”
Take it from him, he knows.
Swanson’s first full major league season was a debate between extremes. The vision got more than partly cloudy as he spent the first month, after an injury-shortened spring, hitting only .156. He lost the starting shortstop position to Johan Camargo during the summer, was dispatched to Triple-A but recalled within weeks after Camargo was hurt. Swanson did manage to hit over .300 in his final 21 games, which partially rehabbed his season average to .232 (with six home runs and 51 RBI).
And committing 20 errors last season, tied for second most in the majors, got him nominated for nobody’s gold-glove award.
If nothing else, 2017 was an educational experience. That’s the file commonly used to store disappointments.
“I think the biggest thing is to learn to control what you can control, stay focused on your path and not get off track because of other things going on around you,” the voice of experience said. “It sounds easy and cliché, but that’s the way it is.
“I’m a lot better at that now. A lot better.”
And just how does one achieve such enlightenment?
“Self-awareness,” Swanson said. “That encompasses everything. When you do start to get off track, understand how to get back on. Have the self-awareness just to realize what’s important. Also realize the things that work for you and stick to those things, like being around the people I love, the ones that fuel positivity in your life, not the people who take away from that.”
This spring has not been statistically kind to the young man, do what you will with spring statistics. Hitting .233 a week out from the start of the season – nearly 200 points less than Acuna’s parting spring average, 82 points shy of Albies – is not going to set off spasms of overconfidence in anyone.
What numbers don’t show is the longer-term payoff he hopes to get from some adjustments at the plate, most notably a shift in how he positions his hands at-bat, looking to shorten up his swing a bit.
“Spring has been great, in my opinion,” he said. “The adjustments that I’ve made, the things I’ve looked to improve upon, I’m starting to see flashes of consistency with that. I’m kind of taking that next step forward.”
Mentally, the approach he brought to the beginning of his second season can be boiled down to a couplet worthy of Muhammad Ali himself:
“Be.
Me.”
“It has always worked, in personal life, sports life, everything,” he said. “Being me is the biggest thing – and then adjust off that.”
He would tell Acuna the same thing should the subject of fielding overinflated expectation ever come up between the two of them and an interpreter.
“I’m here to be a resource for him, if he would ever need it or want it,” Swanson said. “For the most part, guys like to go through things themselves. I’m never going to take the individuality away from somebody. It’s nice for people to express who they are and do their own things and learn from that.”
Officially, the Braves are still treating Swanson like an emerging growth stock. It’s spring, after all. That’s the tone of the season.
“Right now, I’m kinda liking where he’s at,” manager Brian Snitker said.
“The mental strength that this kid has is phenomenal. I was asking (hitting coach Kevin Seitzer) the other day where’s he at? He said the average isn’t great right now, but he’s popping some balls, and I kinda like where he’s at.
“When I talk to him, he’s upbeat, he’s confident. He went through a lot last year, that’s documented. But I like what I’m seeing right now.”
Snitker’s new bench coach is something of a shortstop authority, having played the position for 14 seasons, his last three with the Braves. Walt Weiss helped the getting-to-know-you phase of their relationship with a little joke: Hey, you’re lucky kid, with a face like mine, no team was going to put it up on a billboard.
“I didn’t know him, had never met him,” Weiss said. “I knew a lot of people who knew him well. And they all spoke very highly of him. And they all believed in him – strongly.”
“He’s been great,” Weiss added. “Very intelligent. He has a high baseball IQ. Has a great feel for the game. He’s beyond his years in those departments. He’s going to hit the ground running.”
Swanson just happened to come along at an early stage of the Braves’ rebuild, and both the team and fans were overly anxious to put a face to the project. That Swanson’s was agreeable and familiar as a Cobb County native was nothing but a bonus.
He remains at the heart of the Braves’ plans, which would include forming a formidable up-the-middle combination with his buddy Albies as well as complementing Acuna in the lineup.
And he certainly was among those first baseman Freddie Freeman referred to at the start of this spring when, defining the limits of his patience, he said, “We’ve got a lot of guys that need to take that next step, that got their feet wet last year, and we need them to step up this year.”
You’ll get no argument from Swanson, whose comments could be aimed both at his clubhouse and his mirror.
“We all understand that development is key. It’s getting close to the point where it’s not, ‘Oh, they’re young.’ It’s an excuse,” he said.
“It’s about starting to show signs of where we need to go and where we want to be. I think we’re all on the same page with that. We take our preparation seriously and we take winning very seriously. And we’re going to do all the things we need to in order to do both those things.”
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