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The Dansby Swanson signing by the numbers

The Cubs landed the last of the big four shortstops.

Atlanta Braves v Chicago Cubs
Dansby Swanson takes an at bat last June at Wrigley Field
Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images

When I posted about the Dansby Swanson signing on social media I said the seven-year $177 million deal was very reasonable, dare I say, “intelligent spending,” given the shortstop market we’ve seen this year. One of my friends, Cubs fan James Lockard, summed it up even better when he replied “I guess, but it still feels like buying a Prius when everyone else around you are getting Ferraris.”

James is absolutely right. In a season where most of the major market teams are making 10-plus year commitments north of $250 million to some of the biggest stars the game of baseball has, the Cubs did the sensible thing. They made an entirely reasonable deal, for a very solid player. Make no mistake, Swanson makes the Cubs a lot better than they were when Danny and I were Hoyering Our Way to Existential Dread on Cuppa Cubbie Blue last Thursday:

But Swanson is the responsible move in a sea of big investments in generational talent. That might wind up being the right move in the end, but it’s most likely that the teams who invested in Ferraris are going to outrace the Cubs to the playoffs, at least in the short-term. Let’s take a look at the numbers behind the signing.

The bat

I’ve spent more than a few hours trying to figure out if Dansby Swanson is a good hitter and after all of that time, the closest I got was that Dansby Swanson was a good hitter last season and in the shortened 2020 season, but beyond that I’m not sure. Take a look for yourself:

Dansby Swanson Offensive Stats

Year Age PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+
Year Age PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+
2016 22 145 3 3 9.0%% 23.4% .140 .383 .302 .361 .442 .334 107
2017 23 551 6 3 10.7% 21.8% .092 .292 .232 .312 .324 .276 63
2018 24 533 14 10 8.3% 22.9% .157 .290 .238 .304 .395 .293 79
2019 25 545 17 10 9.4% 22.8% .172 .300 .251 .325 .422 .317 91
2020 26 264 10 5 8.3% 26.9% .190 .350 .274 .345 .464 .348 115
2021 27 653 27 9 8.0% 25.6% .201 .297 .248 .311 .449 .322 99
2022 28 696 25 18 7.0% 26.1% .170 .348 .277 .329 .447 .337 116
Steamer 29 660 22 13 7.7% 25.2% .168 .304 .247 .310 .415 .316 104
Career n/a 3387 102 58 8.6% 24.2% .162 .313 .255 .321 .417 .315 94
Select stats FanGraphs

Swanson has had two full above-average seasons at the plate according to wRC+ and both of those seasons occurred in the last three, sandwiching an almost exactly league average season in 2021. For purposes of looking forward, more recent seasons are more predictive than earlier seasons, so that is good news. Additionally, it’s good news that his best season was not the juiced ball season in 2019. However, he’s also had three other seasons with more than 500 plate appearances and a below average wRC+, Swanson’s true value probably lies somewhere between his best and worst seasons.

His walk rate and K rate have both trended slightly in the wrong direction over the course of his career, although whatever changes he made at the plate appear to have come with more power, so that’s probably a tradeoff the Cubs will take. That said, striking out one of every four plate appearances while walking less than 8 percent of the time isn’t exactly great. You can see where Dansby’s 2022 would have ranked among the 2022 Cubs by K rate below:

2022 Cubs w/ Swanson by K Rate

Name PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+
Name PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+
Nico Hoerner 517 10 20 5.4% 11.0% .129 .300 .281 .327 .410 .320 106
Rafael Ortega 371 7 12 11.9% 19.9% .117 .285 .241 .331 .358 .305 96
Willson Contreras 487 22 4 9.2% 21.1% .224 .270 .243 .349 .466 .357 132
Ian Happ 641 17 9 9.0% 23.2% .169 .336 .271 .342 .440 .339 120
Seiya Suzuki 446 14 9 9.4% 24.7% .171 .326 .262 .336 .433 .334 116
Dansby Swanson 696 25 18 7.0% 26.1% .170 .348 .277 .329 .447 .337 116
Christopher Morel 425 16 10 8.9% 32.2% .198 .320 .235 .308 .433 .322 108
Patrick Wisdom 534 25 8 9.9% 34.3% .220 .274 .207 .298 .426 .316 104
Select stats FanGraphs

Swanson’s 2022 results honestly look like what Cubs fans are hoping for from a full season of Seiya Suzuki, and that is certainly the high end of what Cubs fans should hope for, but it is worth noting that is his career season. There is a reasonable argument to be made that a .348 BABIP is an unsustainable outlier in Swanson’s career. Davy Andrews at FanGraphs made precisely this argument as he tried to unravel the Swanson riddle earlier this offseason:

At the plate, it sure looks like Swanson’s success in 2020 and ’22 was tied to some luck on balls in play. Much of his increased value came from keeping his production consistent in 2022’s tougher offensive environment. However, his contact profile provides some reason for optimism:

Despite a slightly lower barrel rate, Swanson’s career-best hard-hit rate and exit velocity make his BABIP seem a bit more sustainable. His fly balls aren’t suddenly going for home runs at an exaggerated rate. He’s largely done this by getting better at what he was already good at: crushing fastballs. Swanson has always punished four-seamers, but his hard-hit rate on them has climbed to 62.3%, just outside the top 10. The real area of concern is his plate discipline:

You should really check out the whole piece, but the upshot is clear — Swanson crushes fastballs and his hard-hit rate improvement in 2022 is good news. That good news needs to be tempered with realistic expectations given that his two strongest seasons are clearly BABIP outliers. Additionally, he has more swing and miss in his game than the best hitters in the league, which could impact his ability to replicate that career year.

It is worth taking a look at his 2021 and 2022 Statcast profiles next to each other, because while the 2022 profile has a lot of red, well, it tips into blue pretty fast:

2022 Statcast profile
Baseball Savant
2021 Statcast profile
Baseball Savant

Don’t get me wrong, 2021 Swanson would still be an upgrade over the players the Cubs used at 2B last season, but well, it’s just not very clear if the improvements Swanson showed in 2020’s shortened season and his breakout 2022 are sustainable.

At least one analyst I trust believes in the breakout, Ben Clemens at FanGraphs looked at Swanson’s ZiPs projections and percentile outcomes going forward. Again, you should check out the whole piece, but this is encouraging:

The above comparisons to (José) Iglesias and (Andrelton) Simmons might make sense from a total offensive contribution perspective, but Swanson is nothing at all like them at the plate. He’s not a slap-hitting contact fiend; he’s basically the opposite of that, in fact. For the past three years, he’s been stinging the ball on contact, posting barrel rates above 10% in each year, ranking in the top 15% in the game. Some of that is because he puts a ton of balls into the air — you can’t get credit for a barrel if you don’t hit it in the air — but he also makes a lot of loud contact.

Over the years, Swanson has gotten better and better at getting to his power. That’s how you end up with a higher isolated power in 2022, the year of the new dead ball, than in 2019, the peak of the rabbit ball era. He’s hit more home runs in his past two seasons over a combined 1,349 plate appearances than in his previous 2,038 plate appearances in a higher-offense era. Group 2020 in with New Dansby, and that’s 40 homers in his first 1,774 plate appearances followed by 62 in the most recent 1,613 trips to the plate.

ZiPS buys into Swanson’s newfound pop, projecting him for a slugging percentage nearly 20 points above his career mark in 2023. It sees him roughly the same way I do, as an above-average bat despite his early-career struggles:

I admit, these ZiPS percentile projections for 2023 had me substantially happier about this signing than I was when I was commenting on it here last week:

2023 ZiPS percentile projections
FanGraphs

The glove

Even if those top 40 percentile outcomes don’t come to fruition, Cubs fans should be optimistic about Swanson joining the Cubs for his defense, which has consistently been a plus element of his game (although, again, 2022 was clearly an outlier). With Swanson at shortstop, Nico Hoerner presumably moves his defense to second base, and honestly, who wouldn’t want the top of this leaderboard up the middle for a few years?

OAA SS leaderboard 2022
Baseball Savant

Let’s complicate this a little bit, though. If you dig into the direction of the outs above average Dansby and Nico have saved, you’ll see most of them came to the right. In Dansby’s case, he was pretty neutral to his left and back. Nico is better to his left, but worse in the hole. I think they are both solid defenders, but it’s worth noting that Nico could actually be the better overall defender at short. Let’s also take a look at some other leaderboards, first up, fielding metrics from FanGraphs:

SS Defensive Metrics 2022

Name Inn DRS OAA RAA Def
Name Inn DRS OAA RAA Def
Dansby Swanson 1433.0 9 20 15 21.4
Francisco Lindor 1378.2 -2 13 10 16.1
Willy Adames 1199.2 9 10 7 15.0
Jorge Mateo 1257.1 14 11 8 14.5
Nico Hoerner 1117.2 10 13 10 14.4
Miguel Rojas 1113.2 15 10 8 13.4
Jeremy Pena 1165.0 16 7 5 10.0
Xander Bogaerts 1249.2 5 5 4 9.5
Brandon Crawford 979.0 -6 7 5 9.2
Ha-seong Kim 1092.0 10 6 5 9.2
Corey Seager 1259.0 -4 4 3 7.4
Trea Turner 1386.2 -1 0 0 7.1
Andrew Velazquez 906.0 11 3 2 6.9
Elvis Andrus 1220.1 -4 3 3 6.5
Geraldo Perdomo 1160.0 -3 0 0 6.1
Javier Baez 1122.2 -4 2 1 5.5
Jose Iglesias 975.2 -4 0 0 5.3
Isiah Kiner-Falefa 1185.0 10 -2 -2 3.9
Carlos Correa 1113.1 3 -3 -2 2.4
Bo Bichette 1374.1 -16 -7 -5 0.3
Select stats FanGraphs

By FanGraphs’ overall defensive metric the Cubs now roster the first and fifth best defensive shortstops in baseball from last season. If you prefer defensive runs saved, Nico is tied for fifth, while Swanson is tied for 8th (still solid).

That said, there are some red flags lurking under the surface, and those red flags are immediately visible in this Statcast arm strength leaderboard:

2022 SS by Arm Strength

Name Total Throws Max Arm Str SS Arm Str Inf Arm Str Overall Arm Str
Name Total Throws Max Arm Str SS Arm Str Inf Arm Str Overall Arm Str
Oneil Cruz 366 97.9 93.9 93.9 93.9
Willy Adames 576 94.6 90.0 90.0 90.0
Javier Báez 672 91.4 88.7 88.7 88.7
Bobby Witt Jr. 613 94.6 87.4 88.4 88.4
Carlos Correa 613 95.0 88.1 88.1 88.1
Ha-Seong Kim 622 95.2 87.0 87.1 87.1
Jorge Mateo 683 91.9 86.8 86.8 86.8
Geraldo Perdomo 813 96.7 86.7 86.6 86.6
Taylor Walls 628 93.8 86.4 85.9 85.9
Nick Allen 506 90.5 86.0 85.5 85.5
Bryson Stott 542 88.4 85.1 85.4 85.4
CJ Abrams 432 90.7 85.6 85.3 85.3
Nico Hoerner 658 90.3 85.3 85.3 85.3
Amed Rosario 669 90.8 85.2 85.2 85.2
Brandon Crawford 711 92.8 85.0 85.0 85.0
Bo Bichette 739 91.0 84.8 84.8 84.8
Jeremy Peña 496 88.9 84.3 84.3 84.3
Miguel Rojas 773 90.1 84.3 84.3 84.3
Trea Turner 646 87.2 83.7 83.7 83.7
Tim Anderson 390 87.2 83.7 83.7 83.7
Andrew Velazquez 494 85.1 83.3 83.3 83.3
Francisco Lindor 785 87.1 83.3 83.3 83.3
J.P. Crawford 603 87.9 83.2 83.2 83.2
José Iglesias 615 92.0 83.0 83.0 83.0
Xander Bogaerts 647 86.6 82.1 82.1 82.1
Wander Franco 335 84.6 82.0 82.0 82.0
Corey Seager 739 92.0 81.9 81.9 81.9
Elvis Andrus 687 89.9 81.5 81.5 81.5
Isiah Kiner-Falefa 723 86.0 81.1 81.1 81.1
Paul DeJong 404 85.1 81.0 81.0 81.0
Kyle Farmer 572 87.5 81.0 80.4 80.4
Tommy Edman 897 87.4 81.1 80.2 80.2
Dansby Swanson 729 87.0 79.2 79.2 79.2
Arm strength in MPH at least 300 throws Baseball Savant

Forgive the very long table, it’s necessary in this instance, because among all shortstops who had at least 300 throws from their position, Dansby Swanson had the weakest overall arm in that cohort. He threw a full MPH slower than the next worst, the Cardinals’ Tommy Edman. We can look at this data a slightly different way thanks to Statcast visualizations:

Statcast Arm Strength at least 300 throws
Baseball Savant

When I run that same data with fewer throws the only players around Swanson are Dylan Moore and David Fletcher, two guys who are not seeing a lot of playing time at shortstop because they are naturally second basemen. For reference, Nico Hoerner sits at a solidly middle of the pack 85.3 mile per hour average. Put a slightly different way, Nico’s average arm strength sits at the 51st percentile, according to his Statcast player profile, while Swanson is in the 13th percentile. One last caveat, if you look at the graphic above, you can see that Swanson’s maximum arm strength is much closer to the upper end of the graph. It’s possible he’s just not maxing out on every throw, but it’s worth keeping an eye on, because I imagine the Cubs will want the stronger arm at short over the long term and to my eye that is currently Nico.

The market

It’s impossible to tell the real story of this contract without looking at a market that has shifted substantially this year. Whether you prefer MLB Trade Rumors contract estimates or the crowd-sourced variety at FanGraphs, both have been low this offseason. They’ve been low in years, they’ve been low in AAV, they’ve just been low. So they only way to really judge this deal is in the context of the rest of the market. To capture this I created a table with the key offensive and defensive stats above from 2022, plus contract details:

2022 Big 4 SS and Nico

Name G PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Arm OAA Def WAR Years AAV
Name G PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Arm OAA Def WAR Years AAV
Dansby Swanson 162 696 25 18 7.0% 26.1% .170 .348 .277 .329 .447 .337 116 3.1 15.8 79.2 21 21.4 6.4 7 25.3
Trea Turner 160 708 21 27 6.4% 18.5% .169 .342 .298 .343 .466 .350 128 6.5 29.6 83.7 0 7.1 6.3 11 27.3
Xander Bogaerts 150 631 15 8 9.0% 18.7% .149 .362 .307 .377 .456 .363 134 4.7 28.7 82.1 5 9.0 6.1 11 25.5
Carlos Correa 136 590 22 0 10.3% 20.5% .176 .339 .291 .366 .467 .362 140 -6 20.7 88.1 -3 2.0 4.4 13 26.9
Nico Hoerner 135 517 10 20 5.4% 11.0% .129 .300 .281 .327 .410 .320 106 2.3 6.0 85.3 13 14.3 4.0 Arb 1 ~2.8
Key stats and contract details FanGraphs, Statcast & Spotrac

Looking solely at 2022, it really seems like the Cubs got quite the deal on Swanson. The best overall player from 2022 signed for the lowest AAV and fewest number of years. To understand why the market didn’t love Swanson as much as it loved the other three shortstops I expanded the number of years for this table to look at the same players since 2018 (obviously, Nico started playing in 2019, so his PAs are much lower):

The Big 4 SS & Nico 2018-22

Name PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ Off OAA Arm* Def WAR Year AAV
Name PA HR SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ Off OAA Arm* Def WAR Year AAV
Trea Turner 2922 99 149 7.5% 17.9% .185 .342 .301 .357 .486 .360 126 123.6 15 82.9 29.5 24.9 11 27.3
Xander Bogaerts 2737 105 33 9.9% 18.1% .207 .337 .300 .373 .507 .373 134 121.2 -20 81.9 8.9 22.4 11 25.5
Carlos Correa 2240 89 4 10.7% 21.1% .193 .312 .272 .352 .465 .350 125 61.8 46 88.0 49.5 18.9 13 26.9
Dansby Swanson 2691 93 52 8.1% 24.7% .177 .314 .257 .321 .434 .322 99 14.6 42 78.6 50.7 15.4 7 25.3
Nico Hoerner 895 13 28 6.7% 13.1% .108 .308 .277 .333 .385 .313 98 0.1 21 85.6 30.6 6.4 Arb 1 ~2.8
Key stats and contracts FanGraphs, Statcast & Spotrac

One note here, the Statcast arm strength data only goes back to 2020, so it is averaged over three seasons rather than five. However, the rest of this data clearly indicates why Swanson was available for so many fewer years than the other big four shortstops. Over the last few seasons he’s been a glove first, league average bat. The Cubs might still take that, particularly with a pitching rotation that is built on contact, but if those upside ZiPS projections come to fruition, it’s possible the Cubs got the best deal of the lot here and they won’t have to worry about having this deal on their payroll after 2030.

Takeaways

Last week when Carlos Correa signed, I wondered what type of horrific reception awaited Cubs ownership and the front office at Cubs Convention in January given their body of work during the offseason to date.

With the Swanson signing, I think Tom Ricketts, Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins have avoided that worst case scenario, but my friend James’ comment still sticks with me: they opted for the Prius while their peers opted for Ferraris.

This is the largest deal that Jed Hoyer’s front office has inked during his time in charge, and it’s just really not that big of a contract relative to the rest of the league or the Cubs monetary might. It doesn’t crack the top ten in MLB in years or AAV. It is the second largest deal in the history of the Cubs franchise, and it is nowhere near the top 20 contracts as of 2021, let alone ever.

Cubs fans should be excited that Swanson immediately makes the team better defensively up the middle, and likely improves them offensively as well. However, it’s more than reasonable for fans of one of the priciest baseball experiences in the league to wonder when (if?) their team will ever finally flex that financial muscle to sign elite players.