Travis Swaggerty’s professional baseball career had already been filled with a surplus of hardships.
Soon after the Pirates selected the left-handed hitting outfielder 10th overall in the 2018 MLB draft, Swaggerty’s wife, Peyton, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, from which she ultimately recovered. In 2021, Swaggerty had season-ending surgery after dislocating his right shoulder while playing with Triple-A Indianapolis.
After the 2021 campaign, Peyton gave birth to the family’s first child, Sutton Hollie, who arrived six weeks early. Sutton Hollie was technically born prematurely, but the 1-year-old is currently healthy and well.
Now, both Travis and Peyton are dealing with individual hardships simultaneously.
Since the beginning of the month, Peyton has been undergoing frequent testing from various doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. According to a tweet from Travis on May 31, Peyton was attacked by a rabid raccoon over a year ago and has since been diagnosed with “an extremely rare, painful blood disease.”
Meanwhile, Swaggerty is dealing with migraines that have plagued him since November. The migraines were serious enough to push him onto the injured list for six weeks of the minor league season. He’s been playing with Indianapolis again since May 23, but there’s certainly plenty on his mind right now besides the game.
“It's hard enough to play baseball and it's stressful enough at this level to try to get back to the big leagues,” Swaggerty told the Post-Gazette. “Having that stress on top of everything going on off the field is a lot on my plate. It's been really tough to deal with.”
Though it’s difficult for him to say with certainty, Swaggerty believes the migraines were triggered by a flu shot he got last fall. Even so, he turned in his best spring training with the Pirates just a few months ago, producing a .379/.471/.690 slash line with three home runs in 29 at-bats.
Swaggerty was still suffering from migraines, just not during the day; for the most part, they happen during the evening, which was convenient for spring training but certainly not now.
“The mornings would be fine. I’d play the 1 o'clock game, I'd feel fine. If I felt bad, I could withstand it,” Swaggerty said. “But then, you’ve been out in the heat all day, so when I would cool down and I get back to my apartment in spring training, I was like, ‘Man, my head is killing me,’ and I would just go lay in bed.
“It seemed like I was doing that every day.”
One of Swaggerty’s first symptoms with his migraines was vertigo, which required him to undergo efforts to essentially rehab his brain. Recognizing what pitch was coming became secondary to simply seeing it.
“It's been crazy, and there's been times I've been at the plate where it felt like I could barely see because I had a migraine or I was having that vertigo,” Swaggerty said.
He’s been put on abortive medicine and talked often with Dr. Andy Bass, the Pirates’ mental performance coordinator, to develop relaxation techniques. Among the approaches Swaggerty has taken, in conjunction with advice from other individuals within the franchise, has been developing breathing techniques and ways to get the focus off how his head feels.
Still, the migraines can be inevitable.
“Sometimes, I'm out in the outfield and all I'm thinking about is, ‘I really hope I don't get a migraine right now. I feel a headache coming. I really hope this doesn't escalate,’ ” Swaggerty said. “And then, that being on my mind for so long then triggers a migraine that I have to deal with later.”
Indianapolis manager Miguel Perez has been another outlet for Swaggerty, not just about his migraines but about what’s going on in his personal life. The Triple-A skipper has been more than understanding as Swaggerty continues to work himself back to the player he knows he’s capable of being.
It certainly hasn’t been easy for Swaggerty, who hasn’t had an at-bat since June 4 and is 2 for 22 since coming off the injured list. Given what’s going on in all aspects of his life, it’s admittedly been difficult for Swaggerty to keep his attention on strictly baseball.
“It's hard to be 100% present here every day,” he said. “Going through that struggle has been tough. Obviously, my wife's going through a tough deal right now and not being able to be there for her sucks. So just trying to get here and be healthy and play every day, get us back to the big leagues and we can go from there.”
For as difficult as Swaggerty’s ordeal is, he’s fully aware of the arduous gauntlet his wife is undergoing daily over 500 miles away from Indianapolis. He equated the treatment she’s in the midst of to a process of elimination in which doctors rule out certain diagnoses, only to quickly pivot and test for another.
Then, it’s time for Peyton to return to a hotel to care for Sutton Hollie.
“She gets picked and poked and prodded at, and that makes it hurt worse,” Swaggerty said of his wife. “So she's having to deal with that pain and then she gets back and feeling the aftermath of — imagine if your leg was broken and somebody was just shaking your leg. You would feel it for a while. So that's kind of what she's dealing with.
“But she’s focused on being a mom. She's super resilient, and there’s nothing else I can really say. She's been a trooper throughout the whole thing. It's been really tough on her.”
Swaggerty knows his occupation as a baseball player isn’t an ordinary one, nor are the ailments both he and Peyton have been dealt. That doesn’t mean he wants to shy away from being open about what’s been more than a challenging time for his family.
“We're normal people and we go through the same struggles as everybody else. People [that] need help reaching out to therapists or getting on anxiety medicine, whatever it is, it's OK to do that,” Swaggerty said. “And I think that's kind of why, for me, personally, when I first posted about my wife, it was almost as, ‘Hey, I want her to know that not only did she have my support, but she had a lot of support from people that she didn't realize.’ I thought that would help her psyche, and it has, so to have that support from so many people, it means a lot to us.
“We just go through the same type of struggles — obviously, ours are unique — but struggles nonetheless that everyone else goes through.”
Starting nine
Numbers through Sunday’s games
1. Catcher Endy Rodriguez is in the midst of a 10-game hitting streak with Indianapolis. Over that stretch, Rodriguez is hitting .372 with two doubles, a triple and six runs driven in. The Pirates’ No. 2 overall prospect, per MLB Pipeline, is now hitting .251 this season.
2. Fellow catcher and recent call-up Henry Davis has reached base safely in each of his first five Triple-A games, going 4 for 17 with a triple and five walks. He’s started two games at catcher and three in right field for Indianapolis.
3. Outfielder Miguel Andujar continues to rake during his active 15-game hitting streak. Over that stretch, Andujar is hitting .435 with six doubles, four home runs and a 1.233 OPS.
4. Right-hander Carmen Mlodzinski has been tremendous in his last seven appearances, posting a 0.93 ERA with 13 strikeouts and a .206 batting average against. In his first year as a reliever, the Pirates’ No. 23 prospect has posted a 3.28 ERA with 10.9 strikeouts per nine innings with Indianapolis.
5. Right-hander Jared Jones is fresh off a tremendous start for Double-A Altoona in which he carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning. The Pirates’ No. 10 prospect has been charged with two earned runs or fewer in each of his first nine starts in Double-A.
6. Shortstop Liover Peguero is in the midst of a 10-game on-base streak for the Curve, hitting .357 with two doubles, two home runs and a .986 OPS over that stretch. The Pirates’ No. 6 prospect ranks 11th in the Eastern League with a .359 batting average in June.
7. Left-hander Anthony Solometo has not given up an earned run in his last 22 innings spanning four starts for High-A Greensboro. In his last seven outings, the Pirates’ No. 9 prospect has a 1.43 ERA with 42 strikeouts in 37⅔ innings
8. Right-hander Thomas Harrington, who started the season with Low-A Bradenton, struck out eight batters in seven scoreless innings during his second start for Greensboro. He didn’t make it out of the third inning in his first start for the Grasshoppers but bounced back nicely in allowing only two hits while striking out eight in start No. 2.
9. Second baseman Termarr Johnson smacked his third home run of the season on Sunday, which doubled as his 19th birthday. Since May 9, Johnson ranks fifth in the Florida State League for on-base percentage, though his average sits at .240 on the season.
Andrew Destin: adestin@post-gazette.com and Twitter @AndrewDestin1.
First Published: June 13, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: June 13, 2023, 6:25 p.m.
