Shocker of the century: Dansby Swanson signs with the Chicago Cubs, parting ways with his hometown team Atlanta Braves

Before we get to Swanson, I just wanted to take this opportunity to lol very heartily at the breaking news that Carlos Correa failed his physical with the Giants but then was immediately swooped up by the Mets for comparable money (12 years, $315M), and it doesn’t help the narrative that nobody wants to play for the Giants which tickles me pink.

As the subject states, anyone who thought that the Atlanta Braves had any chance at all at retaining hometown boy, Dansby Swanson, simply doesn’t know the Atlanta Braves at all.  It was such a foregone conclusion when the Braves either didn’t try hard enough or just didn’t try at all and didn’t extend him when they had the chance, that he was gone as soon as he hit free agency.

Honestly though, I’m not the least bit mad about it.  Sure, it puts the Braves in a pretty big hole of losing an above-average caliber shortstop, and on paper they’re weaker than they were the year prior when they won the division in exciting fashion.  Not to mention it doesn’t help that the Phillies and Mets have both dropped massive money on upgrading at the shortstop position, and on paper, should both be surpassing the Braves in 2023.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m still in the fan hangover of the 2021 World Series champion Braves that shields a number of years afterward from abject criticism.  Maybe it’s because I’m just such a fan removed from the minutiae of the team that it doesn’t bother me.  Maybe it’s because I knew there was a 0% chance that he was going to come back and I like being proven right.  Or maybe it’s because baseball is a bigger crapshoot than any other sport, and the Braves will plug someone in at the six, catch lightning in a bottle and still remain competitive in a suddenly white-hot NL East on paper.  Or maybe it’s a combination or bits and pieces of all of the above, but I just don’t really care that Swanson isn’t coming back, regardless of how much of a competitive disadvantage it puts the Braves at to not have him.

Dansby Swanson has nothing left to prove staying on the Braves, and the Braves don’t really gain much benefit in dumping a ton of money into keeping him.  He’s the hometown kid from Kennesaw, Georgia who contributed towards the franchise’s first World Series in 27 years, all while making team-controlled money.  As far as Braves Corporate goes, this was the best-case scenario that they could have asked for, and now the real financial commitment to him belongs to the Cubs and not them.

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