Frustrated fans watching Dansby Swanson’s batting average plummet well below .200 are wondering when Cubs manager Craig Counsell is going to sit his starting shortstop.
It didn’t happen Wednesday, with Swanson actually bumped up in the order to the No. 6 spot. His second-inning double in a 5-4 loss to the Athletics was just his fifth hit in his last 12 games.
But such a move is hardly off the table should Swanson’s slump continue.
“You certainly consider all those things,” Counsell said, “and you think about them [and whether it’s] the right time and if it’s necessary. All those things, you think about.”
It’s far from the strongest language the Cubs’ skipper could have used. But he’s already employed the tactic with a struggling veteran, sitting left fielder Ian Happ in back-to-back games last month.
Happ was in a brutal stretch at the time, hitting .148 over 17 games, before getting a couple games in a row off. Since, he’s been one of the team’s better hitters, batting .316 with eight extra-base hits in nine games.
The whole season has seemed a brutal stretch for Swanson, and his .181 batting average was the third lowest among baseball’s qualified hitters coming into Wednesday.
But while Swanson’s ugly numbers have made him a lightning rod for complaints, he’s far from the only thing wrong with the Cubs’ offense, which has looked broken for the last few weeks.
There’s plenty of blame to go around after the Cubs dropped the first two games of their series with the A’s. They’re 5-18 in their last 23 contests.
“We’re not winning a lot of baseball games right now,” Counsell said after Wednesday’s extra-inning loss. “We’re not playing well enough to win a lot of baseball games. You have to earn it, and we’re not earning it. It’s not some string of massive bad luck. We’re not earning wins, flat out.
“Losing stinks, so that gets to you. There’s no sugarcoating that.”
Counsell did make the decision to pinch hit for Swanson late Tuesday, sending Moises Ballesteros to the plate, citing Ballesteros’ ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark on a night where runs were at a premium.
Showing how rough things have been team-wide, Ballesteros didn’t seem like that much better of an option. He has struggled mightily, too, in the middle of a 6-for-69 stretch.
“This isn’t going to continue for Dansby. He’s going to be better,” Counsell said. “We’re just at a moment in time right now. I don’t think [pinch hitting for him is] going to happen very often. He’s going to be better.”
Time on their side?
The Cubs’ recent stretch of ugly results has fans worried, especially considering the team’s championship-level expectations.
“The expectations are super high. And this doesn’t change it,” starting pitcher Colin Rea said Wednesday. “Once we break out of this stretch, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a lot of fun to be a part of, and we’re going to do some cool things.”
That might be a hard sell for fans who have sat through the last few weeks. The Cubs have gone eight consecutive series without a series win.
But there are 100 games left on the schedule.
“Anybody would be lying to you if they were saying they weren’t frustrated right now,” relief pitcher Phil Maton told the Sun-Times. “Hopefully, this is just a blip on the radar and we look back in a month and say, ‘Man, I can’t believe we were going through it like that.’”
