Poor baby: Dansby Swanson cites exhaustion for pulling out of the sixth inning of a game against the Mariners
Here’s the kicker: this was the 11th game of the season. Out of 162, plus playoffs if the Cubs can be good enough to get in. There’s a long way to go before the season is over, and things are only going to get harder as the weather gets harder, the days start piling up, and the wear and tear of an entire season begins to pile up.
Exhausted after just eleven games into the season; as the kids say, the fuck out of here. He cites excuses like his MLS wife’s knee injury and subsequent surgery as reasons for him not getting adequate rest before playing baseball as if him and his wife weren’t both professional athletes who don’t understand that all they do to make egregious amounts of money is play sports, and that all they really have to worry about is keeping themselves healthy and contributing and that injuries to occasionally happen.
What we’re more likely witnessing here is the start of the traditional tanking, sandbagging, talent suppression or whatever you want to call it, of a professional athlete, fresh off of signing a big money contract. As most baseball fans in Atlanta know, Dansby Swanson left the Braves and signed with the Chicago Cubs on a seven year, $177 million contract, which I was tepidly sad to see a key contributor to the championship team depart, but the bean counting stathead I can occasionally be, relieved that the Braves don’t have to be responsible for that deal, especially for a guy I just never got any impression really had his heart with the team as much as he was chasing dollars not that there’s anything wrong with that.
But now that he’s got his big money guaranteed deal, Dansby Swanson really has nothing to play for. He’s going to get paid $20M regardless if he hits .309 with 29 home runs or hits .209 with 211 strikeouts. There’s absolutely no incentive for him to go balls out in every game until around 2028, when he begins creeping closer to the end of his deal, and he’s going to want to try and prove that he’s got talent to contribute to someone, and possibly land one more multi-million-dollar deal before the sun sets on his career.
And this is nothing we haven’t seen before in the grand spectrum of the professional sports landscape, it’s a practice that nobody admits to but everyone knows happens, and it doesn’t matter if it’s baseball, football or basketball, as long as it’s played professionally and there’s money to be made from gamesmanship, the players are doing it.
The thing is, I’ve never seen such a flagrantly low-effort excuse than exhaustion after 11 games into a season before, which is what prompted this post coming into existence. Usually, players just loaf and claim to start slow, and if there’s any sort of injury or ailment, milk that cow until it’s shriveled like a raisin before easing their way back into being forced to earn their money again. They don’t just straight up recuse themselves from an active game and just say they were exhausted, because again, professional athletes are supposed to be the cream of the crop and the greatest athletes in their world. Not bitches who get exhausted after 11 games into a baseball season.
But then again, Dansby Swanson knows there’s no incentive to even trying to hide it, so he just lets loose with a lame excuse. Much like my perceived opinion of his attitude of playing for the Braves, apparently, there’s little heart that goes into his excuse making to justify his fresh contract tanking either.
