Dansby Swanson (SS, ATL) - Week 25 Waiver Wire Pickups

September 16, 2018

Brady Grove profiles Atlanta shortstop Dansby Swanson who despite his recent struggles, has carved out a role for himself as a power/speed option in the middle-infield for fantasy baseball managers.

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ANALYSIS: All in all, Dansby Swanson's season could be characterized as rather pedestrian. Over the last two weeks he has failed to hit a single home-run while producing a sub-par slash of .143/.279/.229 in 35 AB, contributing to his season OPS of .705. Despite this, Swanson does have a few factors swinging in his favor to close out September.

This month has been by far his best of the year as far as plate discipline is concerned, as he sports a 15.7% strikeout rate and 11.8% walk rate. Several aspects of his performance detract from his projections for the final weeks of the season. He has produced less-than ideal ground-ball and pull rate figures of 48.6% and 38.9%, and his soft contact frequency of 19.4% renders many of his batted-balls stagnant (though this has been his best soft contact figure produced since June). However, Swanson boasts a solid hard contact rate of 38.9% for the month of September. This, along with fantastic plate discipline this month means that Swanson is applying his hard contact to more batted balls and getting more opportunities to reach base and steal bags. This offensive package carries a lot more value when considered that it comes in a Braves batting order in the upper-echelon of the MLB. With his ability to consider wrack up HR, SB, or both throughout each month of the season, Dansby Swanson's solid hard contact rate in conjunction with his improved plate discipline warrants strong consideration for fantasy baseball managers down the home stretch.