Pittsburgh Pirates: Travis Swaggerty Exits Game With Shoulder Injury

Pittsburgh Pirates top outfield prospect Travis Swaggerty exited Tuesday night’s game early for the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians due to an apparent shoulder injury

The Pittsburgh Pirates may have lost yet another young and promising player to a slide-related injury, this time with outfielder Travis Swaggerty. The athletic center fielder was pulled from Tuesday night’s game with the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians after jamming his shoulder into first base diving back.

This would make the third young Pirates player to go down an an attempted slide. The team lost Ke’Bryan Hayes after the second game of the season when he slid back into first base and hasn’t been back since (though he will be starting a rehab assignment soon), and shortstop prospect Liover Peguero in an attempted steal of third base.

Swaggerty, a first-round pick by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2018, got off to a hot start to the 2021 season. Through his first 10 plate appearances, he had 4 hits, including a home run, a walk and 7 total bases. He did cool off, as he currently is only batting .220/.333/.439, but he’s still shown a lot of promise throughout his 2021 season.

Swaggerty is showing plenty of patience at the plate with a 12.8% walk rate and 17% strikeout rate. Those are massive improvements over his 2019 marks when he had a 10.9% walk rate and 22.1% strikeout rate. He’s also starting to translate that raw power into game power. He’s currently sitting with a .425 slugging percentage and .225 isolated slugging percentage. Despite his low batting average (.200), he is still barreling the ball. Swaggerty has an outstanding 24.1% line drive rate (MLB average is currently 21.1%) while having a 37.9% ground ball and fly ball rate. He’s hitting a lot more balls in the air as his 2019 ground ball rate was nearing 50% (49.3%). With his power and good batted ball rates, he should see his unluckly .172 batting average on balls in play rise when he returns from his injury.

Hopefully for Swaggerty and the Pittsburgh Pirates, it’s nothing major and he can return to the field soon. The team’s top outfield prospect was looking like a different ballplayer in 2021 compared to the last time we saw him take the field professionally. He could potentially make his debut this year if he isn’t out for very long.