Has Dansby turned the corner?

[thethe]

August numbers:

BB% - 14.5% (inflated because of 8th spot but no IBB's in the month)
K% - 12.7% (Best sign IMO so far)
wRC+ - 125
BABIP - .350 (Can't attribute everything to luck as this is only slightly higher than the expected level of a speedy guy)
iso - .152


Even more than just the numbers above his AB's have been drastically better. Not sure where to find splits on pitches per plate appearnce but I would bet he is seeing anywhere from .5-1.5 more pitches per AB. He hasn't looked awful on sliders anymore.

I'm encouraged. This looks like a player that could be a 4 WAR player doing this over the season. The question is - Do we think this is a small sample mirage?

[striker42]

I don't think it's a mirage but I don't want to put too much stock in it yet. He's got all the tools for this to be real and he looks to be making use of those tools. So it's not flukeish or luck. The question is whether he can sustain it. Can he make the adjustments necessary to keep it going? How will he respond when he hits his next cold streak? Still, this is encouraging.

[cajunrevenge]

Probably should give him a few years at AAA.

[thewupk]

The low k% is the best sign but it's been 55 PA's. He has had stretches like this early in the year too. He clearly has the skills to do for a full season though.

[The Chosen One]

Not convinced yet with his swing.

[DirkPiggler]

Granted it's small sample size and reliant solely upon the eye test, but he's looked better defensively since coming back as well. Seems more confident - not thinking about the routine plays so much.

[smootness]

It is a small sample, so it's hard to make any real conclusions.

But Dansby was better defensively than he got credit for before he was sent down, and his offense was always going to rebound. So while it's a SSS, it's also what I always figured he would do, which is start hitting better. He never should have been benched.

[nsacpi]

He had a very good June.

The sample size for drawing the line between a hot streak and a real change is fairly large. On the order of 400 at bats.

Or course everything starts out as small sample size, even real change. But until you hit a sufficiently large number of at bats, the probabilities tilt toward it being a hot streak.

[Oklahomabrave]

He had a very good June.

The sample size for drawing the line between a hot streak and a real change is fairly large. On the order of 400 at bats.

Or course everything starts out as small sample size, even real change. But until you hit a sufficiently large number of at bats, the probabilities tilt toward it being a hot streak.

Abosolutely. I don't have the stats in front of me, but numbers aside the seeing him register multiple hits against sliders has given me the most hope.

[msstate7]

I take the high BABIP as normalizing. He's still at .278 for the season

[Russ2dollas]

SSS. But encouraged. Still seems to hit it hard.

Seems like he's been a little better on D. I know there have been complaints about our infield but his defense worried almost as much as the Ks....

He's not going to walk much outside of the 8 spot unless he hits for more power.

[thethe]

He had a very good June.

The sample size for drawing the line between a hot streak and a real change is fairly large. On the order of 400 at bats.

Or course everything starts out as small sample size, even real change. But until you hit a sufficiently large number of at bats, the probabilities tilt toward it being a hot streak.

Agreed on the sample size but he's been much better than he was in June.

[msstate7]

Dansby was -0.7 bWAR when he was recalled. He's now 0.1. 0.8 bWAR increase in 13 games. That's pretty impressive

[Hudson2]

I think he's turning the corner. If it were a hot streak he'd still be giving into the down and away slider. He's laying off pitches that he was swinging at earlier and that's about him making adjustments not getting hot.

[mfree80]

The numbers say SSS, but the eye test says he has made substantive changes. Everyone has hot and cold streaks. If the changes he appears to have made continue, he will have turned a corner.

[Enscheff]

I'm still afraid Swanson might have a slider problem. Here is his 15 game rolling wOBA for 2017 graphed with the SL% he sees:

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx...8&ymax1=0.3724

His first 40 games he saw 25%-30% sliders, and his wOBA was terrible.

His next 20 games he saw 15%-20% sliders, and he had his good month of June.

The next 20 games the lines almost exactly oppose each other in small bursts of games.

Then games 80-100 show a peak in sliders and a plummeting of his xOBA.

Now he is seeing very few sliders and his production is again sky rocketing.

In 2016 we saw some of the same:

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx...8&ymax1=0.3724

As soon as pitchers started throwing him 25%+ sliders, his production dropped.

This is just an eyeballing of charts, so it's not exactly accurate, but I want to see what happens when pitchers start feeding him 25%+ sliders before I declare Swanson "fixed".

[Southcack77]

He had a very good June.

The sample size for drawing the line between a hot streak and a real change is fairly large. On the order of 400 at bats.

Or course everything starts out as small sample size, even real change. But until you hit a sufficiently large number of at bats, the probabilities tilt toward it being a hot streak.

I guess I like stories to explain emerging trends. I need to know what he's doing differently or better to buy into a narrative of something has really changed. I don't think a few weeks in AAA should have drastically changed anything except maybe some sort of mental approach or reset. But would want to see that reflected somewhere.

It's nice to see him playing pretty well though.

[Southcack77]

I'm still afraid Swanson might have a slider problem. Here is his 15 game rolling wOBA for 2017 graphed with the SL% he sees:

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx...8&ymax1=0.3724

His first 40 games he saw 25%-30% sliders, and his wOBA was terrible.

His next 20 games he saw 15%-20% sliders, and he had his good month of June.

The next 20 games the lines almost exactly oppose each other in small bursts of games.

Then games 80-100 show a peak in sliders and a plummeting of his xOBA.

Now he is seeing very few sliders and his production is again sky rocketing.

In 2016 we saw some of the same:

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx...8&ymax1=0.3724

As soon as pitchers started throwing him 25%+ sliders, his production dropped.

This is just an eyeballing of charts, so it's not exactly accurate, but I want to see what happens when pitchers start feeding him 25%+ sliders before I declare Swanson "fixed".

What do you think the reason would be that he is seeing fewer sliders? Just the draw of pitchers he is facing coupled with maybe some situational variance?

Doesn't seem like the book would have changed on him much but maybe being down made it slightly harder to scout?

[mfree80]

I'm still afraid Swanson might have a slider problem. Here is his 15 game rolling wOBA for 2017 graphed with the SL% he sees:

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx...8&ymax1=0.3724

His first 40 games he saw 25%-30% sliders, and his wOBA was terrible.

His next 20 games he saw 15%-20% sliders, and he had his good month of June.

The next 20 games the lines almost exactly oppose each other in small bursts of games.

Then games 80-100 show a peak in sliders and a plummeting of his xOBA.

Now he is seeing very few sliders and his production is again sky rocketing.

In 2016 we saw some of the same:

http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx...8&ymax1=0.3724

As soon as pitchers started throwing him 25%+ sliders, his production dropped.

This is just an eyeballing of charts, so it's not exactly accurate, but I want to see what happens when pitchers start feeding him 25%+ sliders before I declare Swanson "fixed".

Hmmm. Interesting. I can't help but wonder why people would throw him fewer sliders if he has proven he can't handle them? One possibility... It appears lately that he has been handling them a little better, and more importantly, not swinging at them when he can't reach them. He hasn't been fooled by them as often. If that's the case, then that is a real positive. Time will tell of course.

[Enscheff]

Hmmm. Interesting. I can't help but wonder why people would throw him fewer sliders if he has proven he can't handle them? One possibility... It appears lately that he has been handling them a little better, and more importantly, not swinging at them when he can't reach them. He hasn't been fooled by them as often. If that's the case, then that is a real positive. Time will tell of course.

Hard to say.

Maybe because he simply has gotten lucky and hasn't faced guys who feature good sliders.

Maybe guys don't fear him enough to care about pitching him carefully and are challenging him more with the pitcher behind him.

Maybe he has handled (either by hitting or laying off) enough sliders recently that they stopped throwing them.

One thing is for certain though....guys will start to notice his .900-1.000 OPS over the last 1-2 weeks and start to look at different ways to attack Swanson. The obvious plan will be to go back to attacking him with sliders. When that happens we will see how Swanson responds.

If Swanson is seeing 25%+ sliders through most of September and is still posting a .320+ wOBA over that stretch, I'll take that as a decent indication he is "fixed"