Cubs Starter Smyly Shares His Thoughts on Swanson

The Chicago Cubs made a huge splash in free agency this winter. In fact they made a couple, which showed that the front office was in fact keeping their promise of being active in free agency. 

But the big one was the signing of superstar shortstop Dansby Swanson.

Seen as one of the jewels of this free agent class, Swanson signed with the Cubs by agreeing to a seven-year, $177 million contract. He signed to help this franchise win and usher them into their next era. 

Starting pitcher Drew Smyly had some positive words on his new teammate when speaking with The Athletic's Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney.

“He really, really wants to win and help the guys around him because he doesn’t have a big ego at all,” Smyly said. “I was saying that last year, ‘If the Cubs are trying to get a shortstop, we got to go get Dansby. That’s the guy I would get.’ He’s just a winner. He makes people better. He’s very positive. Especially with some of our younger players, they’ll see how he goes about his business and take to that.”

In fact, Smyly believes they got the best out of the crop of shortstops that featured names like Trea Turner, Carlos Correa, and Xander Bogaerts.

“You just have talks, especially at the end of the year, like, ‘OK, what are the Cubs going to do?’” Smyly said. “It was pretty obvious that they wanted to get one of those big shortstops. I was like, ‘I would rank Dansby at the top of that list.’ It’s just from being around him, and his defense is so good. He’s just a gamer, like Nico’s a gamer, too. It’s going to be fun watching them play together.”

It appears that Swanson is already highly thought of not just within the organization but also by his teammates. 

A new era of baseball may have just arrived in the North Side.