Any outfield struggles the Pirates have had on their major league roster this season have felt relatively low-stakes.
Whether it’s Ka’ai Tom more recently, who has played in just four games but has struggled a bit, Anthony Alford or Dustin Fowler, they haven’t found a consistent third outfielder to pair with Bryan Reynolds and Gregory Polanco for this season.
That’s okay for the current season. There aren’t a bunch of young outfield prospects waiting for their opportunity, being held down by older players getting a chance in the majors instead of them. On Saturday, though, the Pirates released their minor league rosters, and 23-year-old Travis Swaggerty, the No. 9 prospect in the system according to MLB Pipeline, was named to Class AAA Indianapolis.
That doesn’t mean he’s going to be ready for the majors tomorrow, but it does mean Swaggerty made substantial progress over the last year and a half. The last professional baseball he played was at High-A in 2019. Technically, he’s skipped Class AA Altoona on the way up the organizational ladder, although he did spend 2020 at the Pirates’ alternate training site, March 2021 at Pirates spring training and April 2021 at the alternate training site in Pittsburgh.
“[Making Class AAA] was awesome, but it kind of started at the alternate site,” Swaggerty said Sunday, during Indianapolis’ virtual media day. “I was excited to go there first, and for me to be able to perform and do well, stay healthy, that was a big deal. But this game, it just kind of depends on what happens up top, and then everything else just trickles down. So the moves we made gave me an opportunity to start here. I'm very excited.”
The only observable step in Swaggerty’s progression since 2019 was in spring training, where he recorded three hits in 17 at-bats, walking three times and being hit by a pitch. Since the 2020 alternate site in Altoona was closed to the public and no games were played anyways, and the 2021 alternate site didn’t have publicly available statistics, spring training was the only available glimpse from the outside.
What wasn’t observable appears to be the kicker, though. General manager Ben Cherington said Saturday that Swaggerty was one of the Pirates’ “most consistent hitters” at the alternate training site.
Perhaps Cherington is to be believed, since the Pirates wouldn’t challenge Swaggerty by assigning him to Indianapolis if they didn’t feel he was ready. He is the second-highest-ranked outfield prospect in their system, and could be a prominent piece of their future if all goes well. Overwhelming him isn’t in their best interest, obviously.
Indianapolis manager Brian Esposito added more detail when asked about Swaggerty himself Sunday.
“It's a player that plays without a governor. It's one speed. Everything he does is quick-twitch, it's fast,” Esposito said. “There's some pop in the bat. We saw as he played some games in the alternate site that he's able to leave the building at some times with the barrell, but there are a lot of things that he does with his legs where he can put the ball on the ground and create some havoc for the defense. We saw a game where he homered to lead off the game and then he puts a bunt down the first base line and beat everyone over there. There's a lot of tools. There's a lot of skillset, and he's a plus-plus defender in the outfield with a plus-plus arm. So there's a lot to like here.”
The addition of power to Swaggerty’s game would be a welcome development, though not totally unforeseen. The most homers he’s hit in a minor-league season was nine in 121 games at High-A in 2019. His scouting report on Fangraphs, though, gives him a 60 grade on the 20-80 scouting scale for his raw power, which would mean it’s a plus tool for him. The next step would be developing that into game power, where Fangraphs projects him at a 45 on the same scale, which is slightly below major-league average.
That’s for down the road, and an anecdote about a home run hit in an alternate training site game shouldn’t sway one’s opinion of Swaggerty either way. The larger point is that the young outfielder turned heads when he was given an opportunity, and it’s resulted in an even greater opportunity.
At this rate, that outfield competition at the major league level could have another name thrown in the hat by season’s end. Swaggerty was asked about that very thing Sunday, but opted to keep focus on his current situation rather than a potential future one.
“You know what, at the end of the day, I can only control what I can control,” Swaggerty said. “It would be really easy to look and see and be excited. I don't control any of those moves. All I can control is how I go about my business, and I'll continue to do that. Whenever the time comes for me to go up, I'll be ready."
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak
First Published: May 3, 2021, 7:09 p.m.
