'Your Body's Really Smart': Dansby Swanson on Mysterious Missing Walks, a Smoother Swing, and Being Healthy

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images

"At the end of the day, hitting the ball hard is obviously the goal every time you have an at-bat," Dansby Swanson said last Thursday in Minnesota, before the final game of the Cubs' series against the Twins. "If I had a joystick, probably, things would look a lot different."

In other words, Swanson, 31, knows his process has been better than his results this year. He enters the second half batting a respectable .253/.301/.429, but those numbers aren't massive improvements on the .242/.312/.390 line he posted last year. That's a bit perplexing, because Swanson is achieving his goal (hitting the ball hard) on 47.8% of his balls in play this year, which would be a career best. He's already matched last year's total of 16 home runs, and his expected numbers are well ahead of his actual ones. If he could get that joystick out and move the ball around a bit more, he'd be enjoying plenty of extra singles and doubles, but as we all know, that's not how it works.

Two things about Swanson's season are particularly interesting, though. Firstly, there's the fact that he does have more of a joystick to hand than he has in the past, in a way. He also has his turbo button back. Plagued by a knee sprain that lingered and a sports hernia he played through all year, Swanson lost a step last year, and his swing was a bit more rigid than usual. His sprint speed sagged from a four-year baseline of 28.4 feet per second to 27.8. That could have turned out to be age-related decline, but unsurprisingly, he's bounced back to 28.3 feet per second this year.

His bat speed is actually down, relative to last year, but that's because he's exercising more bat control late in his swing than he could muster in his compromised state in 2024. At times, his barrel was out of his control last year; his core muscles weren't strong enough to give him smooth command of the whole movement.

This year, that's changed. Here's a Statcast visualization of his swing at the contact point, for both 2024 and 2025. These are composite images, so they don't tell the story of any one swing, but they're pretty good illustrations of what's different.

Note the cleaner transfer of weight happening in the image on the right. Swanson hits off his front foot, when he's right; he strides open but then pushes hard off his back foot and lunges into the pitch to generate rotation. That movement has been much more stable and smooth this year, with both the knee and the muscles in his lower abdomen (which absorb and transfer lots of energy during the process of the front foot landing and the hips and shoulders rotating) stronger than they were before. He's actually caught the ball slightly farther in front of his center of mass this year, but with less extension of his arms at the contact point, which means he has more margin for error with his timing.

One reason for the subtle change in contact point is that his swing is a bit flatter through the hitting zone, but Swanson said that was just what happened when he started locking in on the ball better.

"Your body's really smart," he explained, "and it unfolds how it wants to unfold in order to get to certain pitches. It's not necessarily anything that I've consciously put any thought into. [It's] just kind of trusting athleticism."

The results, then, will come, if Swanson just keeps contacting the ball the way he has all season. He doesn't need to sweat the batted-ball luck. Expected batting averages (xBA) and slugging averages (xSLG) can be misleading, but in his case, his xBA of .272 feels fairer than his actual figure, and so does his xSLG of .481. If he can sustain this process, he'll collect hits at a higher rate in the second half.

More mysterious, perhaps, is the fact that Swanson is also drawing walks at the lowest rate of his career. He's also striking out more this year. We've seen him get to more power this year, and we know that Seiya Suzuki has undergone a similar transformation (more slug, less on-base skill). Is Swanson a similar case?

No. And here's where things get odd. Whenever a batter is drawing fewer walks, you can ask a standard set of questions to determine why. Let's run through them. 

1. Is he simply seeing more strikes? This happens often. Pitchers might decide they no longer fear a hitter, or that they have a particular plan to get him out within the zone, or they might be desperate not to put him on base for free. It would be a neat narrative fit if the presence of Kyle Tucker and the breakouts of Pete Crow-Armstrong and Michael Busch had left Swanson (who often bats between two of the three) seeing a ton of strikes from pitchers, especially right-handers. Surely, though, you didn't think it would be that easy. Swanson saw 52.7% of pitches in the zone in 2024. It's down to 51.6% in 2025.
2. Is he chasing more often outside the zone? That's the natural second thought, right? Is the approach just getting raggedy? Is hunting pitches to hit leading a hitter to expand the zone? In fact, this is more like question 1A than question 2. But it's also not where we're going to find our answer. Swanson chased 24.0% of pitches outside the zone in 2024; it's 23.9% this year.
3. Is he swinging more inside the zone? Another common issue, which isn't even always an issue. A player might decide not to miss their pitch in the zone so much, and start swinging more when they get that meaty offering. Often, that means more hits; it just means fewer walks. But, there's been no meaningful change here. Swanson swung at 71.0% of pitches inside the zone in 2024, and has swung at 72.5% of them in 2025.
4. Is he whiffing a lot more? This actually isn't a very reliable indicator—whiffing more means deeper counts, so if you maintain a disciplined approach, you're likely to walk more often if there's some swing-and-miss in your game than if you're a great contact hitter. Still, it's worth checking on, and there's a little bit of signal here. Swanson's overall rate of whiffs per swing is up from 28.7% to 29.9%, and since (as we've seen) his swing rate has held pretty static, that does mean more strikes that can end an at-bat. His contact rate within the zone is identical to last year's, but he's coming up empty considerably more often when he chases. That does matter, but it's not enough to explain a drop from a career walk rate of 8.9% to 6.8%.
5. Is he being more aggressive early in counts? Sometimes, a hitter isn't swinging more in total, but they're swinging more at the first pitch or two in a plate appearance. Normally, for this to have any impact on walk rate, those swings should result in more balls in play, which would also mean a lower strikeout rate. We don't see that in Swanson's case, though—which shouldn't surprise us, because he's not getting more aggressive early. Swanson's 40.5% swing rate on 0-0, 0-1 and 1-0 pitches this year is the same as his rate for 2023 and 2024.

Those are the big five questions, and their answers don't really give us satisfying insight into why Swanson hasn't walked much this year. Swanson was at a loss to explain it, too, other than to note the importance of sequencing.

"Chase rate doesn't always indicate whether you're walking or not," he said. "It's when those chase things happen, because if you're chasing with two strikes, obviously, that's when strikeouts go up. It really depends on what counts, and what you're not chasing. Part of it, too, is if you get good pitches, you want to be able to hit them."

All fair, and maybe there's something there. Swanson's personal Put-Away Rate (the percentage of two-strike pitches that resulted in a strikeout) is up this year, from 20.4% in 2024 to 23.8%. Before he can draw a walk, sometimes, he's punching himself out by chasing inopportunely. Meanwhile, although the frequency with which he's reached advantageous counts (2-0, 3-1, 3-0) is noticeably higher this year than in past campaigns, his swing rate when ahead in the count is up, too, from 51.8% to 53.1%.

That's not a bad thing, per se—although, by the numbers, swinging when way ahead is a losing proposition. If Swanson is putting good, aggressive swings those pitches in counts that already favor him, the result should be more power, and we've seen plenty of power from him this year. Remember, though, that his bat speed is down this year. That's true even if we isolate hitter-friendly counts; he averaged 72.4 mph on swings in those counts last year but is down to 71.2 this year.

Swanson's bum luck on batted balls is just that. His swing is in good shape, and he's recognizing hittable strikes well. His SEAGER rating this year is a robust 21.1, right back where it was in 2023 after a troublesome dip in 2023. (SEAGER evaluates the balance between selectivity and aggression for hitters.) If he keeps doing everything exactly the same way, he'll put up better numbers in the second half, and he seems very confident about that. To reach another level, though, he could (and perhaps should) change his mental approach to counts in which he's earned the advantage. Accepting a few more walks from those positions of strength would make him more productive, and force the next adjustment from opposing pitchers.

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[Development DL]

Sticking close to force application principles,, within the context of efficient bio mechanics, allow for a stable process , that weathers the 162 game storm . 
 

I like the idea of jumping off that platform , into a potential cognitive approach change , as it relates to swing decisions. 
 

You are one of one . Thanks