Dansby Swanson stood in the Wrigley Field interview room Wednesday evening and told a reporter he had no idea what he was thinking at the plate. His exact words: “I don’t really know what I’m thinking. I don’t think I am thinking and that’s the good part.”
That silence between the ears produced the best offensive game of his career. Three home runs. Eight RBIs. A grand slam in the eighth inning that put an exclamation point on Chicago’s 23-3 demolition of the San Diego Padres. The win completed a three-game sweep and gave the Cubs their ninth victory in the last 10 games.
Swanson’s explosion didn’t come out of nowhere, exactly. It just looked that way. Through his first 40 games this season, the 32-year-old shortstop hit .201 with 27 hits, six homers and 25 RBIs. That’s the kind of start that gets a guy benched on a team with playoff hopes. But the Cubs stuck with him, and over his last 10 games he’s batting .366 with 15 hits, eight homers and 26 RBIs. In his last three games alone he’s hitting .615 with five homers and 11 RBIs.
This isn’t a mechanical fix. Swanson didn’t overhaul his swing or tweak his stance. Instead he described something more elusive: the feeling of letting his hands work without his brain getting in the way. Hitters talk about this zone all the time but rarely describe it honestly. Swanson basically admitted he stopped trying so hard and the ball started finding the barrel.
The Cubs offense just got a lot scarier
Chicago tied its franchise record with eight home runs in a single game Wednesday. That’s not something you see every day, even at a hitter-friendly park like Wrigley. The Padres left town looking shell-shocked and the Cubs moved to 49-38, five games back of Milwaukee in the NL Central.
What matters going forward is the lineup construction. Swanson plays a premium defensive position at shortstop. If he’s also hitting like a middle-of-the-order force, that changes how opposing pitchers approach this whole lineup. You can’t pitch around Ian Happ or Seiya Suzuki if Swanson is punishing mistakes behind them.
The third homer Wednesday was a grand slam in the eighth inning, the kind of at-bat that turns a blowout into a statement. The Cubs didn’t just beat the Padres. They buried them, and Swanson was holding the shovel.
He got drafted No. 1 overall by Arizona in 2015 for games exactly like this one. It just took a while for the quiet mind to show up. Now that it’s here, the Cubs look like a team that could make some noise in the second half.
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