One day after Carlos Correa signed his 13-year, $350 million deal with the San Francisco Giants, Jesse Rogers jumped on ESPN 1000 to discuss the fallout. Well, more specifically, he was on to talk about the Cubs and Dansby Swanson, and everything that comes next between those two parties. Fortunately, it was actually pretty good news from a guy who, to be fair, was spot on in his early suggestion that the Cubs would NOT be the team to hand out one of these mega deals to a shortstop all offseason.
I transcribed his comments live and to the best of my ability. So these aren’t direct quotes (except where otherwise noted), but it is the gist of his interview.
At the start of the offseason, the Cubs probably would have ranked the shortstops as follows: Trea Turner *gap* Carlos Correa and Xander Bogaerts *gap* and then Dansby Swanson. So even internally, the Cubs ranked Swanson fourth of four shortstops. That’s not really a surprise, but it feels worth repeating. And it also is interesting to learn that they may have been down a bit on Correa, relative to our expectations (and what seems to be general market consensus).
The chances of Dansby Swanson leaving Atlanta, at this point, are probably greater than 50/50. Rogers would actually put it at 60/40 he does not return to the Braves. He sees the Cubs as having just about a 50/50 “or a little bit better” shot at landing Swanson, themselves. In fact, Rogers says if you had to pin him down as of right now, he believes Swanson would pick the Chicago Cubs.
To that end, Swanson reportedly already has offers in hand (presumably from the Cubs), and it’s pretty much down to just the part where he decides. It’s possible he gained a little bit more leverage after Correa signed (both because of the price of that deal, but also good old fashioned market scarcity), but that probably won’t change the offers much.
But don’t get too excited, because according to Rogers, the deal for Swanson is “still going to be $200 million or more.” Yeesh. It really seems like the Cubs backed themselves into a corner on this one.
Who’s involved? Rogers didn’t seem to have a great sense other than what has generally been reported, with mentions of the Cardinals (I doubt it), Dodgers (taking a step back now, for Shohei Ohtani next offseason), Twins (Rogers doesn’t think they’ll pivot to Swanson) or Red Sox. In either case, the Cubs are “right near the front of the line,” for Dansby Swanson.
I’m going to save any more specific analysis for the actual outcome here (if the Cubs get him, for how much, what else they do, etc.). But I will continue to repeat that I *do* still hope the Cubs get Dansby Swanson. He’s not Carlos Correa, but he’s a very good, very useful player. Yes, the Cubs could have taken a shortcut by signing one of the other three guys with better bats, but they’ll have even more work to do if they whiff on Swanson, too.
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