Chicago Cubs All-Star Named Player Who Didn’t Live up to Expectations

The Chicago Cubs highest-paid player will have to be better moving forward.

Sep 28, 2024; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Chicago Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson (7) scores during the eighth inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field. / Matt Marton-Imagn Images

Not much went right for the Chicago Cubs throughout the 2024 campaign. From a team standpoint, it was as disappointing of a season as they could've had. 

That automatically means that players didn't play as well as expected. We could go down a long list of all of the Cubs players who didn't perform at the level they were expected to, but there would be too many to go over. 

Whether they lacked talent, didn't play up to their standards, or simply needed to hang them up, Chicago is far from competing because of what many of their players showed throughout the year. 

Of those players included shortstop Dansby Swanson, who might've had the worst showing on the team. 

Swanson, on a nearly $200 million deal, posted a below-average 98 OPS+ and hit 16 home runs in 149 games. After being named an All-Star in the prior two campaigns, the expectation was for him to play at that level again. 

That's why Jake Misener of FanSided named the 30-year-old someone who didn't live up to expectations in 2024.

"The problem with Swanson this year came at the plate. Fangraphs' Offense (Off) metric had him at 6.9 in 2023 and just 3.4 this season. As the team's highest-paid player (and the recipient of the second-largest contract in Cubs history), the expectation is that Swanson could be the team's stopper. By that, I mean he could be the veteran presence who helps pull the offense out of cold spells. That wasn't the case this season. As Chicago's offense evaporated in May and June, Swanson batted just .205/.286/.364 and was just as big a part of the problem as anyone on the roster. Sure, he turned it on in the second half and looked much better down the stretch, but the Cubs needed more from him," Misener wrote.

If the Cubs want to be a better team moving forward, they'll need the Georgia native to start playing better. His contract expires after 2029, so this could potentially become an issue in the near future.

On the flip side, it's also fair to suggest that the first eight years of his career were much better than this one. If he puts together similar showings to what he did from 2020 to 2023, Chicago should be fine.

If not, that's a lot of money they'll have to deal with on the books for minimal production.