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P2Daily: A Hitting Travis Swaggerty Is A Difference Maker

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As you make your way through a baseball season, you have to expect peaks and valleys from each individual player. The hope is that by the time all is said and done that a player enjoyed more peaks than they did valleys.

If they do, it was a successful season. Remember, baseball is the game as a professional hitter that if you fail seven out of 10 times, you are considered successful.

The key comes in not buying too much on the highs, or selling off completely during the lows.

That being said, if there is one prospect that can really give this system a jump by really finding his footing it’s not Oneil Cruz or Roansy Contreras.

It’s Travis Swaggerty.

To an extent, we’ve seen what Cruz and Contreras are capable of at the highest level, even if they aren’t there right now.

Right now, even after being drafted in the first round back in 2018, we still aren’t sure what to make of Swaggerty.

The defense is there, maybe enough so that he could still find his way onto a major league bench, but the question still lies in what he can provide with the bat.

April was not a good showing, as Swaggerty slashed a really disappointing .164/.270/.236, totaling just 13 total bases during the entire month.

He’s missed some time to injury, so he’s only played eight games but they’ve been a completely different tune. Swaggerty has a slash of .385/.448/.577 in eight games in May. This week against Toledo he has 12 total bases with potentially Sunday’s game still to go.

Remember, in these kind of scenarios you don’t want to buy the high, or completely abandon ship with the low. After five hits in his last two games he’s got his season average up to .235. As quickly as he gotten it back up, it can come tumbling back down.

But seeing Swaggerty find some type of footing offensively is huge, especially with the current makeup of the major league roster. Injuries to Greg Allen and Jake Marisnick has soften up the depth in the outfield on the Pirates roster, to the point they’ve still had to throw Diego Castillo out there at times.

Jack Suwinski has served admirably in right field, he’s even provided some pop (three home runs) and strong defense. On Baseball Savant, Suwinski and Ke’Bryan Hayes are the only two active players with a positive Outs Above Average (OAA) mark.

He’s also just batting .167 in 22 games, and his strikeout rate is nearing 30%.

So getting a former first round pick that has the potential to contribute in so many facets of the game to have any kind of success in the majors can give this system a win that it seems they are still searching for.

The Pirates still haven’t started the push of prospects up to the majors yet, it seems they are waiting for one to really force his way up there, at least with the names currently on the 40-man roster.

While Cruz and Contreras are the obvious names, how much of a win would it be if a player with the raw tools and draft status, but also someone who has lost nearly two years of development time, also throw himself up there?

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Song of the Day

Anthony Murphy
Anthony Murphy
Anthony began writing over 10 years ago, starting a personal blog to cover the 2011 MLB draft, where the Pirates selected first overall. After bouncing around many websites covering hockey, he refocused his attention to baseball, his first love when it comes to sports. He eventually found himself here at Pirates Prospects in late 2021, where he covers the team’s four full season minor league affiliates.

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