Behind Dansby Swanson, Cubs’ resurgent bats bash 13 homers in two days: ‘RBIs are a good thing, right?’

A week ago, with the Cubs buried in an ever-increasing avalanche of pitching injuries, shortstop Dansby Swanson unveiled an interjection that could only come out of his native Georgia.

“Holy catfish, this is pretty crazy.”

Well, there aren’t any better words to describe what happened a week later, the Cubs’ bats showing they’re very much back to life at a hot, windy Wrigley Field, where they launched a baker’s dozen home runs in two days against the Padres.

Swanson accounted for five of them, including a trio that drove in eight runs in Wednesday’s sweep-completing 23-3 slaughter.

The once-slumping shortstop is on some kind of heater, one really never equaled in franchise history, his 26 RBIs over the course of the last 10 games a new club record and the first such occurrence in baseball since Joe DiMaggio in 1939.

Holy catfish, indeed.

“We never have baseball figured out, and this tells you that,” manager Craig Counsell said after the game. “He probably went through the roughest patch of his career, and on the other side of it is the best stretch of his career. You figure it out. I don’t think Dansby could it explain it to you, either.”

Mr. Swanson, do you have an explanation?

“No,” he said. “That’s kind of the beauty of it, why we keep coming back to this game, no matter how tough it may be at times. Good or bad, you want to show up every day and give it your best effort.”

It was pretty much exclusively bad for Swanson for the longest time, bad enough that the last time the Cubs were at Wrigley Field, team brass was peppered with questions about benching the second highest paid player on the team.

He’s now the Cubs’ RBI leader, with 57 of them. Only nine major leaguers woke up Wednesday with more, remarkable for a guy who just recently was searching for any kind of positive result.

“The one thing I was taught early on playing this game, RBIs is like the one stat that continuously adds up,” Swanson said Tuesday. “No matter if you’re going good or bad, they can continue to stack up each and every day.

“RBIs are a good thing, right?”

Yes they are, especially for a Cubs team chasing championship-level goals.

Swanson has rapidly gone from only making an impact with his excellent glove to someone who could prove an enormous piece of a relentless lineup.

“Shortstops that [hit 20 homers and drive in 80 runs in a season] and play Gold Glove defense don’t really just grow on trees, you know?” second baseman Nico Hoerner said last week in New York. “He’s a star for a reason.”

“Dansby’s been the same every single day,” said outfielder Michael Conforto, who homered twice Wednesday. “That’s what real leaders do. He’s that steady presence for us, and he deserves every bit of what’s coming to him because he works his butt off. We’re stoked for him.”

Swanson’s surge is far from an anomaly in a surging Cubs lineup that has put its monthlong malaise behind it.

The team matched a franchise record with eight homers Wednesday. That’s a unique afternoon, even if they did it almost a year ago to the day last July 4, but it’s a sign of how this offense is humming and what it can do at its best.

The Cubs’ bats have roared to life at a perfect time, with the pitching staff beset by injuries, and has scored 140 runs in the last 19 games, winning 15 of them.

“Whether it’s me, Pete [Crow-Armstrong during his incredible June] or any other of our other guys who are capable of incredible things, that’s what makes a great team great,” Swanson said. “It’s what makes this group dangerous. It can come from anywhere at any time.

“Guys have a lot of confidence, and we’re playing like it.”

The Cubs entered the season’s fourth month still chasing the Brewers, back 5½ games in the NL Central.

But if they can keep this up?

Oh, you know what they say in Georgia.