Dansby Swanson's injury messaging speaks to larger Chicago Cubs' problem

It's no surprise that injury news is beginning to creep out for the Chicago Cubs now that some time has passed since the end of their 2024 season.

The biggest revelation was that Nico Hoerner is undergoing flexor tendon surgery. Hoerner's recovery dramatically shifted the Cubs' approach this offseason, but there was a different injury story that may have gone unnoticed last week.

Sahadev Sharma wrote for The Athletic (Subscription Required) that Cubs fans should feel encouraged by Dansy Swanson's second half of the season as it was an indicator that his struggles during the first half of the season were due to a knee injury he suffered during an April 25 game against the Houston Astros.

What followed the knee injury for Swanson was a stretch from April 25 through May 31 where Swanson was playing arguably the worst form of baseball in his career. During that stretch of games, Swanson slashed .175/.241/.238/40wRC+ through 87 plate appearances.

What has become problematic for the Cubs, and it extends beyond Swanson's insistence on being an iron man, is that the team rarely uses the IL when the situation desperately calls for it. The Cubs view a core player gutting through an injury during the early months of the regular season the same way that the Dodgers view Freddie Freeman playing through an ankle injury during the postseason. It's not even in the same ballpark.

One of the reasons why the Cubs' season was sunk after May was due to the struggles that Swanson had. As he was playing through his injury, Swanson wasn't even in the same neighborhood of being a replacement-level player.

As Craig Counsell continues to gain influence throughout the Cubs' organization, injury management must be an area that the team becomes better at. The payoff for the team and player pushing through an injury is non-existent. Even in Freeman's case with the Dodgers, he has a 31 wRC+ this postseason.

Part of this also speaks to the Cubs' bench construction. Even with his abysmal slash line while playing through the injury, the case could be made that Swanson was still a better option than Miles Mastrobuoni (36wRC+ in 2024) and Nick Madrigal (57 wRC+ in 2024).

If the Cubs want players to exceed their expectations in 2025, it starts with putting the roster in a better spot to survive an injury to a core problem.