It's time to have the talk with Dansby

We like to joke about how a guy at a Cubs fan site tsk tsk'd Cubs fans a couple of years ago for complaining about Dansby Swanson's offense. He said, "He's a 5 WAR player on defense, they aren't paying him to hit!"

At the time, Dansby was in the midst of a season where he slashed .244/.328/.416 with 22 homers and 80 RBI. Or, as we will now remember them, "the good old days."

Swanson is an excellent defensive shortstop. There's no way you can reasonably argue otherwise. But when the Cubs signed him to a seven-year, $177 million contract, Dansby was coming off of back-to-back seasons where he had combined to hit 65 doubles, 52 homers and had driven in 184 runs. So, I kinda think some of that money was for him to hit.

Last year, Dansby's numbers went down across the board. He slashed just .242/.312/.390 with 16 homers and 66 RBI.

Now? Good lord, we'd kill for him to hit .240. Through the first 29 games, he's slashing a mind boggling .181/.232/.345 with four homers and 15 RBI.

But you know what? You can live with your ninth place hitter hitting poorly if he's playing great defense at a premium position.

What's that? Dansby's hit fifth in each of the last 27 games?

Well fuck that. No, that's not going to work.

So far, in his career as a Cub, Dansby is hitting .237/.312/.398/.709. in 325 games. That's not good.

When the Cubs signed him we all had a hearty joke about how we hoped he turned out better than the last time the Cubs gave a contract to a Barves shortstop. Could you imagine if he hit worse than Jeff Blauser? Hah hah hah. Good one.

Well, that hasn't happened.

Yet.

Blauser's slash line in 223 games as a Cub was .226/.343/.342/.685. So Dansby's still got him by 11 batting average points, and .024 in OPS.

Oh, no.

Well, at least his contract's nearly up. There's just four years and $137,000,000 left on it.

So what do the Cubs do?