The Braves are promoting top prospect Dansby Swanson to the big leagues, and he will make his major league debut Wednesday.
The timing of this doesn't make a lot of sense on most fronts. It's hardly a secret that teams will manipulate service time to maximize the return from a coveted prospect, and by promoting Swanson now, rather than waiting until sometime in mid-April of next year, Atlanta has positioned Swanson to become a free agent after the 2022 season, rather than 2023. It doesn't sound like a big deal now, but it can turn out to be something very important: By sticking to a plan with Kris Bryant, the Cubs essentially traded a couple of weeks of Bryant in 2015 for an extra year of the slugger, in team control, in 2021.