What's Wrong With Dansby Swanson? Should the Cubs Give Him a Break?
What's wrong with Dansby Swanson? The Chicago Cubs shortstop is stuck in a brutal slump, hitting just .150 in the month of May and raising serious questions about whether manager Craig Counsell should give him a few days off. Since his big home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 24, Swanson has struggled mightily at the plate, going through one of the toughest stretches of his Cubs career. Despite posting 7 home runs and 27 RBI this season, Swanson is batting just .183 with 35 hits through the first two months of the year
Video Transcript
Since he hit that go-ahead home run against the Dodgers on April 24th, 100 at five at bats, 161 batting average, one home run, four doubles, six RBIs, 10 walks, 27 strikeouts.
Look, you wanna have a K rate of over 25%, you can, but guess what?
You better mash at least a 450 slug.
Like, those are the rules, right?
Those are the three- Yeah true outcomes of baseball.
So he's, he's striking out, the premier strikeout guys, he's striking out like Schwarber and he's hitting 161.
Right.
And he's hitting one- Without, without the home runs.
And he's hitting 150 in May, okay?
And we all know this, like, we know Dansby Swanson pr- pretty well by now, right?
He's a streaky guy, right?
But this is Come on, this is one- hitting 150 in May.
And I understand that, you know, people wanna do the DFA thing, people wanna do the get him out of here or send him to the minors or trade him or whatever it is.
None of that's going to happen right now.
But I will say this, that, and this is, comes back to, honestly, this comes back to a Craig Counsell thing for me.
This is one of those moments when you need to have an uncomfortable conversation with a veteran player.
It's just That, that's the bottom line.
I mean, I get it, like, you can struggle for a while.
Dansby's done it.
He's pulled himself out of it.
But 150 in May, Luke?
Dude, we can't have it, man.
It's not, it's not professional baseball, right?
And I like Dansby, and I understand that if you look up his stuff, he's had these little, these dry spells before, and he's rebounded and he's played well.
And I'm not a whole big I'm not big on, like, you know, sit the guy down guy, but at 150 in May, man, and you've seen what he's done, and we've done the work here on the show of, like, right now everybody's throwing him spin and he can't hit it, and he also can't catch up with fastball.
It's a, it's time where they have to just s- g- put him back in the lab for a couple of days and they, I think they do.
I think they need to sit him down for a couple of days, right?
