The Cubs don’t seem to have any plans to bench Dansby Swanson.
It’s a good thing they didn’t Wednesday, when the slumping shortstop lifted a two-run homer into the bleachers as part of the team’s seven-run second inning, an offensive explosion for a lineup that’s struggled to produce for weeks.
The long ball was an undoubtedly positive sign but will only make a slight improvement to Swanson’s offensive numbers, which are bad enough to make him a prime target of frustrated fans. He came into Wednesday’s game with a .175 batting average that ranked as the worst in the sport among qualified hitters.
But Cubs brass, asked if it’s time to make a change at shortstop, did not indicate there’s a plot to move Swanson – the second highest paid player on the roster, with a $28 million salary – from his everyday role.
“Obviously, Dansby has struggled,” team president Jed Hoyer said Tuesday. “He’s gotten some days off. He’s working hard to improve. The offense has been a challenge, overall. It shouldn’t be, in general. We should score plenty of runs, but that hasn’t been the case.
“Our run prevention is probably the backbone of this team. … We prevent runs really well. We won a game in San Francisco the other day because we played great defense, honestly. So you can’t just forget about that when we start to struggle a bit offensively.
“We can’t just run away from our run prevention at times when we struggle offensively.”
Indeed, Swanson continues to play excellent defense while scuffling at the plate, something that can be said about the team as a whole. A year after the Cubs won the team Gold Glove, they’re again the best defensive team in baseball, according to multiple metrics. That is valuable enough to the Cubs that they’d rather not pluck Swanson from the lineup.
But that doesn’t mean they’re satisfied with Swanson as a sub-.200 hitter, and they’re hoping his continued presence in the lineup will jumpstart his frigid bat.
“I think we should be continuing to invest in Dansby getting back to the offensive player that we know he is,” manager Craig Counsell said Wednesday. “That’s what needs to happen for this team. That’s important to keep trying to do, and the best way to do that is to have him out on the field.”
Swanson has never exactly been an offensive menace, statistically. He’s a slightly below league-average hitter in his career, with an OPS-plus of 96. Coming into Wednesday, he was a .235 hitter with a .705 OPS in four seasons in a Cubs uniform.
But in addition to flashing a fantastic glove, he has swung a bat far more capable than it has been so far this season. Just last year, he hit 24 homers, the third highest single-season total in his career, making Wednesday’s shot look more like the norm; he went his previous 24 games without hitting one. He’s currently walking at a higher clip than at any point in his career, with a 12.7 percent walk rate.
But while removing Swanson from the batting order on a somewhat permanent basis doesn’t appear to be happening, Counsell has pulled various levers to try to add some juice to Swanson’s spot in the lineup.
He’s given his shortstop multiple days off, as Hoyer alluded to, and he’s pinch hit for him late in games numerous times in recent weeks, including in consecutive games this week against the Rockies, with Counsell subbing in Michael Conforto on Monday and Pedro Ramirez on Tuesday.
Being removed for a pinch hitter could understandably be a shot to the confidence or simply rub a veteran player the wrong way. But Counsell’s been impressed with how Swanson has handled being subbed out.
“I think Dansby takes a lot of pride in that,” Counsell said. “It’s no fun getting pinch hit for in his situation. He’s on the top step cheering.
“I take note of that. I think that’s impressive. It’s easy to kick a player when he’s down, for his struggles. But that’s not easy to do for the player right there.”