How Dansby Swanson Has Turned His Season Around--And Why It Might Not Last

[RandallPnkFloyd]

The Cubs' long-term shortstop has come on strong since the All-Star break, but there are mixed signals within his data in terms of the sustainability of that success.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

The amount of ink spilled over Dansby Swanson, his performance (on both sides of the ball), and his contract throughout this 2024 season is enough to… do something that you could do with a large volume of ink. In a summer where many of us in this space spent the time lamenting just about every facet of an underperforming offense, it was Swanson’s ineptitude that drew the most ire.

I last wrote about Dansby Swanson on Apr. 10. It was a different time. The offense was off to a strong start, showcasing discipline and intention with seemingly each individual plate appearance. They were chasing starters from games early. Swanson himself was slashing .270/.378/.514 through 45 plate appearances, with a walk rate over 15% and a top-30 ISO. He was sixth overall in HardHit%. The falloff from there was precipitous.

Even by the end of April, his wRC+ sat at just 89. He followed that with a figure of 38 in May. Things rebounded slightly in June (110), before a mark of 63 in July. Only in August did Swanson turn in his highest quality month, from start to finish. Therein, Swanson went for a 120 wRC+ while slashing .261/.340/.443 and posting strikeout and walk numbers of 22.0% and 11.0%, respectively. Every single output listed was his best in a month this year, with a .182 ISO trailing only June for his best, as well (.204).

It’s impossible to look at the explosion of the team’s offense and not look at Dansby Swanson as a key part of it. There have been sexier elements of it, for sure. Pete Crow-Armstrong’s apparent breakout, Miguel Amaya’s mechanical adjustments, and Seiya Suzuki turning in a third consecutive well-above-average month could all have a lot to say about this team down the stretch. But we can’t overlook Swanson’s rebound. What we can do, though, is look upon it with less optimism than we might some of the other developments within the lineup. 

On Apr. 10, Swanson was aggressive on – and subsequently mashing – fastballs. Despite some regular month-to-month variance, that’s long been his M.O.: capitalizing against heat. The early trends were not at all indicative of how he’d finish the month. Fastballs ended up being the pitch group he swung at with the lowest frequency in April. Hard stuff then took a backseat to offspeed in May, June, and July--offspeed, as in the pitch types that Swanson chases the most, whiffs at the most, and manages the lowest rate of hard contact against for almost the entirety of his career. 

August, though, showed us exactly the iteration of Swanson that the team needs to see in order to justify his contract. He swung at fastballs at a 53.5% clip last month, while cutting the offspeed Swing% by nearly 15 percentage points (down to 46%). Shockingly (he said sarcastically), he demonstrated his lowest chase rate (17.6%), lowest whiff rate (26.2%), and highest HardHit% (40.0%) against the hard stuff. So Swanson, a guy with the clearest of needs at the plate to maximize his output as a hitter, did exactly the thing that he needs to do for an entire month.

As such, it becomes easy to ask: Why doesn’t he just swing at fastballs all the time? There’s some complexity to that question, though--mostly in that pitchers are likely smarter than to give the fastball masher a diet of fastballs.

Except, what if they aren’t? Swanson has seen an increasing number of fastballs, with July to August representing the only drop, wherein he still saw roughly 55% heaters in the latter. Even when he’s behind, pitchers are still throwing him the hard stuff at a rate that has sat as the highest in four of the five completed months to date. One would absolutely be justified in wondering exactly where this level of awareness has been from Swanson throughout 2024. 

We can’t attribute all of it to pitch types. Swanson has made some mechanical adjustments focused on elevating the ball more, given his alarming career-high of a 49.4 GB%. Perhaps he’s drawn some recent inspiration from Mal Swanson’s Olympic exploits (I say that only slightly ironically; I’ve got NWSL takes for sale, too). But with how tight the correlation has been throughout his career between offensive output and fastball aggression, it’s difficult to put too much stock anywhere else.

Ultimately, there are a couple of truths in matters of Dansby Swanson. One is that he needs to succeed on fastballs. A second is that he’s not always going to swing at fastballs. That leads to a third truth, which is that Dansby Swanson is going to remain an immensely frustrating player to watch, because of the first two. The looming fourth truth, however, is that Swanson isn’t going anywhere. So as much as we’d like to see a prolonged stretch like this, we’ll likely have to accept the fact that moments such as these are fleeting, due to his own issues with plate discipline--a fifth truth, if you choose to view it as permanent.

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[Bertz]

Dansby Swanson wOBA and xwOBA by month

April - .294 / .339

May - .211 / .291

June - .326 / .321

July - .255 / .345

August - .339 / .317

September - .599 / .433

Aside from May where he played pretty poorly leading into his IL stint and September which is three days old he's been largely the same guy all year.  The difference is that in the second half here fewer balls are finding gloves.  His xwOBA bar on baseball savant has been saying 60-something percentile for months now and his actual production is finally mercifully catching up.

[squally1313]

15 hours ago, RandallPnkFloyd said:

Things rebounded slightly in June (110)

2023 Dansby Swanson put up a 105 wRC the entire year and was the 20th most valuable offensive player in baseball. Putting up a 110 wRC with the rest of his skill set is a tad bit more valuable than a 'slight' rebound.