Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Dansby Swanson is on fire

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Dustin Rhoades discussed Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson's heater, as he homered three times in the club's 23-3 win against the Padres on Wednesday. Swanson has 26 RBIs in the past 10 games, a franchise record.

Rahimi Harrison Grody I don't want to break time I want to yell a motion Can we handle more Anthony Heron Midday's 10 to 2 on 104 3 the score Danesby Swanson

the batter hits a fly ball into deep left center back toward the wall Grand Slam Danzby Swanson with a grand slam to left

he has three home runs and eight runs batted in for the day. And the Cubs lead 22 to 3. It's just not a real score. No, it's not a real score. That is courtesy of the Cubs Radio Network. Pat Hughes, Ron Coomer, Zach Seidman, the crew.

You know them well. This is Rahimi Harrison Grotie. Dustin William, William Rhodes, of the morning show is in the house for this hour because I wanted him to talk about baseball with me, and he obliged. Thanks for letting me hang out for a couple more minutes with you guys. And I'm just going to go for it. I love that Dan Sby Swanson has found his

swing again. And I know that's something we're going to talk about. But we just heard the Grand Slam. Pat did a great job. It's great to have Pat back. Zach did a nice job. Always does a nice job. It's always best when the whole crew, all three of them are there. It's a great radio call that we get to have right here on 104.3 of the score. Absolutely. But that grand slam, as far as his baseball card, I don't think should count. Because if you watch the video, the backup catcher or the catcher of the Padres is the field

position playing. And I know that really aggravates Pat Hughes. He hates position. Yes, he hates that. Ozzy does too, by the way. And I agree. And I agree with it as well. He's leaning back. It was almost like wiffle ball or bad softball or throwing it to a little kid. Dansby's up there

like he's going to hit a softball or it's home run Derby, he pops that thing. That should not, it should count in the score of the game because that's the game. But I don't know that if that's his first and only three home run game, I'm not so sure you want to have that as your first three run, home run game over that pitcher. That's all I'm saying.

Which may be why he was a little more reticent after the game. It wasn't like he was here to like take the flowers and the sash and the crown and wave to the crowd. He wasn't like that. Yeah, Rodolfo Duran, the. the catcher pitching at that point. So maybe, you know, he's like that. I could see him not wanting to take full credit for that because of the nature of the situation.

Correct. However. It went out of the park. It went out of the park. What was the last time we got to talk about this team scoring runs like this? And it's fun to do it. You still did the work to get there. And with the way the pitching staff is beat up, this is what you have to do, right?

You have to put as many runs across the plate. Listen, what was it the other night? The Cubs had a nice lead. and all of a sudden... Nine to three. Yeah. Nine to three leave. And all of a sudden it was nine to six or nine to seven.

That was the final. They hung on to win that game. So it's really never over. But when it's 23 to three or 22 or 19, and again, you can't take everybody out of the game, right? Because Ian Hap had been removed from the game at that point. Yeah. And the Padres had been removed from the game. Yeah, the Padres had done a lot of substitutions too.

But you only have so many people available too. Exactly. Right. So you had to leave. Again, and I guess I can see it both ways. I'm just talking about from the back of the baseball card. If that was his first three home run game, might need a little asterisk.

I think you're right to give that the appropriate context, and we don't do that enough, so that that's beyond fair. But in the meantime, we know what we're seeing. This goes back to June 17th. That's against the Rockies. There's discussion, Dustin, about him, Dansby-Swanson, going over the iPad with John Maley and Tently. This is a guy who also, I think we forget this,

to him coming here when he was with the Atlanta Braves, the year that the Braves won the World Series, they talked about how during the season, in the middle of the season somewhere around July, they were not happy with the way the Enfield was playing. So they and Ron Washington, who was at the time in charge of the infield, decided to adjust. And Dan Spey's got that on his resume.

We're not happy with this. We're going to do something about we're going to adjust. And then we saw what happened. It paid off in tenfold for them. They won the World Series. That's enough of a resume. So we know he's capable of making these in-season adjustments. Hitting is a little more difficult.

You know, infield alignment is a group project. But since June 17th, he has hit 366 with nine home runs and 29 RBIs. He had the 11 RBI day, as we know, against the Mets. But this is not a flash in the pan. Oh, no. No, I mean, listen, he is really good. I understood why about two and a half weeks ago, most people wanted him to take a couple days off.

Right. I mean, myself included. But the problem was, and I believe he said it to Mully and Haw, Jed Hoyer talked about the backbone of this team is the defense. And that really upset a lot of good Cub fans, that you're going to go out there and say this team is built on defense, defense, defense. Well, then you can't take Danesby-Swanson out because he is arguably the second best defender on that team behind PCA.

He's your best in-field defender. Now, don't get me wrong. It's either him or Nico. Nico's very good as well. But Swanson, I think, has touched better as far as a defensive player. I agree with that. And we forget about the fact that, you know, you and I both know that there were a couple of years

where definitively and purposefully, this team was built to win two to one ball games. Absolutely. And acquiring Dan Sby Swanson was part of that. Is that how you went in modern baseball? I don't think so. Probably not, no. But that is, I see why they hold that position so dear and why that is so important.

It's why they extended PCA. It wasn't the bat necessarily. It was his center field defense. Right. You can't, that's not, I don't think you can teach that kind of defense. Those are God-given abilities. You can, to your point about placement strategy, knowing, okay, this is the way we're going to approach the hitter. So I might shade a little bit that way.

I might shade a little bit that way. Based on the runners, I'll play a little bit farther in. I'll play a little bit far. That kind of stuff. But there are catches that he makes that, you know, they have those probabilities where, you know, 95% of the time that is a hit. Stack cast, yeah. And he takes those hits away. That's it.

He does. And that's how it turns into defensive run saves. That how it turns into wins about replacement. And Dansby, his credit, I think, has really made the adjustments. Now, if you talk to Dansby, he doesn't sound like he wants to bring it up as much. So we're going to hear from Craig Counsel as far as what he's seen out of Dansby during the stretch. Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, we never have it figured out. We never have baseball figured out.

And, you know, I think this tells you that. You think, you know, a guy is probably, he probably went through the roughest patch of his career. And on the other side that is the best stretch of his career. You figured out. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think Danesby could explain it to you either. But, you know, I think it's the same thing as say it. like now, I think moving forward days, we just try to keep it rolling as long as you can because he's impacting the game.

He's impacted so many games the last 10 days in a major way. So it's been great. It's been fun to watch. That's Craig Counselor. Our baseball coverage on the score is presented by Xfinity. Score the most reliable Wi-Fi. One price, five years guaranteed. Xfinity, imagine that.

Dustin, why do I feel like this is an episode of all shucks with Pat Murphy when I heard Craig counsel say that. Do they just not want to talk about the adjustments that have been made yet? Because it's not just as simple as math is happening and this is all just happening to him at the plate. Well, you get a lot of the Craig's famous lines. Like if you were going to create like a soundboard of like drops that we play here on the score. A rotation. Right. That's baseball. Like you know, you're going to have good days. You're going to have bad days. If we could figure it all out, then why would you need me, Craig Counsel, the $8 million a year skipper of your Chicago Cubs? but they also maybe don't want to give away the secret sauce.

Yeah. And that's okay. Like your KFC, right, really protects that recipe, right? It's like, you know, locked down, but what, you know, you might know one or two, but we're not going to give you all 11. Now, he has been. He's been working his rear end off. And it's nice to see it pays off.

And that's kind of big picture, big life, right? If you work hard, eventually you're going to get out of your rut, but you got to keep going. It's not going to happen in a day. It's not going to happen in 48 hours. It's not the karate kid where the montage happens and then suddenly. you're able to win the All Valley Championship. Love those movies, though, Leila.

I love the karate kid. It taught us too much, though. We can't just montage our way into this. Who hasn't tried to do that kick? The crane? We all have. Who hasn't, you know, and then with the, you know, sweep the leg. You got a problem with that, right?

I mean, these are classics. I mean, Cobra Kai. I know they tried to make Cobra Kai sound like it was misunderstood, but I think we'd all know what Kobe Kai was about. Oh, everybody who went to a halfway middle-sized or bigger high school, knew some Cobra Chi types. No, no, did I, you know, my ordering sweep the leg on, say, the Packers? Maybe, you know, maybe, but not for everybody.

So our friend Jesse Rogers did have this quote, and he says, here's Danesby Swanson late last night on working with hitting coach John Maley more recently. Really good stuff. So I want you to hear this, Dustin. He says, I think the one thing that he's really done for me personally is just like I'm always best when I'm just convicted in something. So this kind of goes back to the karate kid idea. Or I believe in something.

He, meaning Maley, is just really, really bent on me in a good way of just walking me through it, coaching me, not coaching me hard, but like holding me to a higher standard and just kind of creating an avenue of like work that I can believe in. You can go into the cage and you can try to fix your swing. If you go to the driving range, you can go there and try to fix your swing. It's also nice to be able to get to the point where you're like, I'm not in there trying to fix anything. I'm in there trying to groove my swing to repeat the same good thing. Every time. So muscle memory, something else you'll hear from golfers, right?

Muscle memory. And similarly in pitching, repeatable mechanics, right? So there's a couple more here from this quote to Jesse. And it starts to just show up in game because you're just doing the same right thing over and over and over and over again. And so essentially that that's what he's done for me. I mean, I straight up asked him. I was like, dude, I may be 32.

I may be close to 10 years. And when he says, hey, he means service time, which is a big deal in baseball. I may have had a lot of success in this game, but I still like being coached. I still sometimes like having my hand held and walk through with, and he was just the one that has been doing it for me lately. But all the hitting guys, they've also been awesome and positive and consistent and supportive. And I think they've all put their heads together and kind of just like said, hey, this is what we are going to do. And males, John Maylee, was just the one that was able to kind of relay the message to get through it to me. and it's obviously made such a difference.

Good reporting. Excellent to be able to get that kind of info. John Maley gets a lot of love from his hitters. I've heard Nico on the station talk about John Maley quite a bit. If you've been watching the Love at Reunion stuff, there's an episode with John Maley that can't miss. You know, Marquis re-showing those episodes. You're right about that.

I worked with John in Houston. Okay. And same thing. You know, Jose Al-Tubei definitely credits him with, becoming who he was as a hitter. You saw the progress there out of that team. There's a reason he's got such a good reputation in baseball. But it is curious to me that Dansby doesn't necessarily need, hey, it's not a leg

kick. This is not a toe tap. It's what I'm telling myself. And that sounds like what's happening here a bit. Absolutely. And he's just repeating to what we just spoke about. He's repeating what he's been doing. And it sounds like Maley reinforced to him, you just got to

keep doing what you're doing. Let's not really change too much up and you'll work your way out of it. And that's why it's 162, right? That's why it's 162 games. And you need that in this sport to really figure out what you got. Now, Dustin's Price, I'm bribing him with iced tea from Starbucks to stay another segment. That's Dustin William. William Rhodes, our morning show producer here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie and Dustin's hanging out with the first hour with us today, talking a little baseball, which I certainly enjoy. We'll get Dustin to talk about the White Sox, what do you do in the pregame show?

People only think you do Cubs, but I know that's not true. No, I've got thoughts on the Sox. There's a massive series coming up against The Guardian, so I want to get Dustin's thoughts on it next. I know they lost, but come on. This is what it's all about. And then we'll talk with Dustin for another segment, and then Chuck Swirski is set to join us at 11.

So thanks for hanging with us today, and Rahimi Harrison Grotie on the score.