Dansby Swanson didn’t hesitate to put it out there after showing up for his first spring training in Mesa, Arizona, in 2022.
One, he wanted the Cubs — who’d signed the shortstop in free agency for $177 million over seven years — to be his team. If any player was going to embody the standards for all the Cubs in the big leagues as well as the prospects moving up the organizational ranks, it was going to be him.
Two — and he felt this in his bones — he wanted to play every day. Over his last three seasons in Atlanta, from 2020 through 2022, Swanson had played in every single Braves game except for one, going 381 for 382 at answering the bell. With the Cubs, he intended for this to be at the heart of how he lived up to his huge contract.
“If we want to win,” he said then, “the best players have to play. In order for the best players to play, you have to take care of yourself. In order to take care of yourself, you’ve got to care and care about your teammates. That same mentality is now going to be brought here. It has to.”
Nice idea. But not so much.
Swanson missed 15 games in 2023, and even at that he appeared to tire in the stretch run, when the Cubs collapsed and missed the playoffs by a single game. In Tuesday’s 4-3 victory in 10 innings at Wrigley Field, Swanson returned to the lineup for the first time since May 7, following a stint on the injured list to rest his painful right knee. He already has missed 11 games this season. Going into the series opener against his former team, the Braves, he had one extra-base hit and one RBI — coming on the same swing, a solo home run — since April 24 and was slashing .209./.285/.341 for the season.
Swanson’s lack of production at the plate was due in part to his knee, which he first banged up sliding into second on a steal on April 25. But now that he’s back — along with second baseman Nico Hoerner, for the first time since May 13 — it’s pretty obvious what the Cubs, who haven’t been hitting at all or winning enough to present a pretty overall picture, need from him.
No excuses, not that Swanson is making any. Just start earning that superstar money again.
“We’re getting two players that are normally in our lineup back, and that should help,” Counsell said. “Is it the solution? Is it the answer? I don’t think anybody would say that’s the answer, but it’s going to help.”
In his first at-bat in two weeks, Swanson — batting eighth in the order for only the second time as a Cub — lined a two-strike hit off the glove of third baseman Zack Short and later scored on a passed ball as part of a two-run second inning against Braves starter Charlie Morton. In the fourth, he lined a one-out double into the left-field corner but was stranded at second. Still, it was a promising start.
The two-time Gold Glove winner at short says he’s back to 100% physically, and that’s not all. He’s also clearer in between the ears after having tried to play through pain — and done poorly at it — while holding a bit too stubbornly, he admits, to the ideal of taking the field whenever possible.
“It was very prideful of me to try and continue to keep playing,” he said, “but I think the best thing for us and myself was to take that time off. Thankfully, I’ve got a lot of people around me that were able to kind of help me in that decision-making and everything. I think a step back can be good at times; you’ve just got to use your time wisely.”
Swanson watched from the dugout, chatted up teammates, fetched water for whoever needed it, got to know a couple of pitchers he doesn’t talk to that often a little better and, aside from that, went a bit nuts.
“I really started going stir crazy after a while,” he said.
But the bench was where he needed to be, and one person who was influential in that was Counsell. Playing every day was part of the conversations when Swanson the free agent was meeting with Cubs president Jed Hoyer, general manager Carter Hawkins and then-skipper David Ross, but Counsell — who believes in using the bench and getting players rest — doesn’t care about any of that and saw this one pretty clearly.
He called Swanson “open to different ways to look at the game or look at solving a problem.”
Not that Swanson is going to be asking for more time off any time soon.
“I’m not going to sit here and be like, ‘Yeah, I’m not going to play as much as I would like to,’ ” he said. “I just think there’s times where you can be smart or stupid. [Counsell and I] have those conversations about what’s smart and stupid, so we’ll see.”
