Nearly three hours before first pitch, Chicago Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson trekked from the outfield batting cages to the grass in front of the visitors dugout at Oakland Coliseum.
He signaled to major-league coach Jonathan Mota, who already had two practice mitts ready for Swanson on top of a white towel, his blue Fungo bat lying adjacent.
Over the next five minutes, Swanson progressed through a sequence of defensive drills and fielded roughly 55 hops off Mota’s Fungo. He incorporated a small tan glove and a black flat mitt to force precision, centering the ball to field it cleanly.
The smaller surface doesn’t leave much room for error. Movements must be short with clean footwork. The short hops simulate the last hop an infielder might see off ground balls in a game.
The drills help create confidence for different types of plays an infielder could encounter. It turns in-game reads into second-nature adaptability when a ball takes a tough hop.
“It really gets you in the best place possible to consistently finish plays,” Swanson told the Tribune. “The combination can get you mentally ready, it’s consistent and it’s something you can control every day.
“The better defenders make the easy plays easy. You have to consistently make the plays you’re supposed to make. It’s a good prerequisite before fielding real ground balls.”
Swanson’s low-stress, five-minute routine, which he tries to incorporate into his pregame work twice during a three-game series, began in Atlanta under the tutelage of third base coach Ron Washington. Swanson liked to tell Washington how his mom, Nancy, was actually the first person to expose him to those types of drills, recalling how she would do the same thing with a tennis ball when he was a kid.
Washington’s pregame work with infielders is so renowned around baseball that members of the Cubs coaching staff asked Swanson about it before he had a chance to bring it up after he signed in December. The team embraced the drills for Swanson and any other Cubs infielders who wanted to utilize the techniques, which already were on the staff’s radar from watching Washington and Braves infielders.
That isn’t to say the Cubs haven’t featured defensive infield work before this season. But Swanson’s different perspective and experience brought more options for how the Cubs want to attack that area pregame. Mota compared it to making paella: “Everybody’s putting in a little bit of something.”
“When you come to a different organization, you have to be open-minded. And for us, it’s the same way,” Mota told the Tribune. “This is who you are? OK, we’re going to work with this. These guys are here for a reason and it’s because they’re good.
“They ask for feedback, like, this is how I feel, this is what I see, what do you have for me? It comes with failure, which is part of the game. It’s just learning from those mistakes.”
The Cubs’ receptivity to Swanson bringing those drills to Chicago — and the way some teammates have adopted parts of the routine — aided him in adjusting to a new organization.
“There’s obviously so much newness and to be able to take something that’s kind of always been a part of your routine, to continue that, provides almost like a safety net,” said Swanson, who is coming off his first Gold Glove Award. “It’s not taxing and your legs are still fresh for the game. It’s one of the best routines out there in my opinion.”
How the coach hits the balls is the key element. It starts about 5 to 10 feet apart, with the infielder starting on his knees. The ball — hit to glove side, back hand and head on during the sequence — must hop at the right point for the work to be effective.
Swanson praised Mota for how good he has become in less than three months with the drill. But that didn’t stop Swanson from joking about how Mota should watch instructional videos of Washington, the decadeslong master.
“He challenged me and I like a challenge. Let’s go,” Mota said with a grin. “He’s a leader and he says a lot of right things. The way he talks to his teammates, his peers, they talk about defense and the whys. That allows other guys to be more open.”
Swanson stressed the value of an infielder trusting to play with one hand. Whenever he teaches young kids, Swanson preaches adapting to a one-handed defensive game rather than a two-handed, get-in-front-of-the-ball approach.
“It’s given me more confidence because I’ve been able to evolve to do more things with the glove with one hand as opposed to two because your range gets so much more limited when you have to get in front and play with two hands,” he said.
Some Cubs infielders use parts of Swanson’s routine within their own individualized work with Mota and bench coach Andy Green, who also works with infielders.
Nick Madrigal has watched Swanson go through the drills and tried it out, calling it “awesome.” Every infielder has his own style of preparation. Madrigal likes utilizing both short-hop drills and on-field Fungo grounders at second and third base.
Nico Hoerner is more feel-based with his defense, homing in on working the angles to balls. He often can be seen taking a variety of grounders at second base, including drills from his knees. Sometimes coaches have to remind Hoerner not to overwork himself before games.
Patrick Wisdom picked Swanson’s brain about the routine to better understand the process of what he’s trying to accomplish. Learning new cues and understanding how they help position the body has been part of a defensive payoff for Wisdom.
“Now I’m able to digest that and figure it out and then kind of make it my own,” Wisdom told the Tribune. “It’s different thoughts on playing through the ball and how, for him, he presses through and the key words he uses. I’m able to take that into practice off live Fungos, like, OK, this thought puts me in this position.”
Three weeks into the season, moments of carryover from drill work to game situations are apparent. During Monday’s win in Oakland, Hoerner faced a ground ball right at him that took a bad last hop. It didn’t faze him, and Hoerner quickly adjusted his hands to make the play.
In another situation, during a win over the Seattle Mariners on April 11 at Wrigley Field, Wisdom threw out Eugenio Suárez at first to end the third inning on what seemed to be a routine grounder. But the play required an on-the-fly adjustment by Wisdom as he read the ground ball’s path.
“I literally thought as that ball was midway to me, I kind of felt stuck,” Wisdom recalled. “But then I was like, ‘Oh, just press through it like Dansby does.’ It happened so fast, it was like muscle memory from what we’ve been working on.”
Added Mota: “At this level, guys are here because they are athletes, but we still have to go over simplifying things and talk about anticipating. When our guys anticipate three things before it happens, one is going to happen and it’s always going to put you in the right place.”
Hours before the Cubs’ 4-0 victory Tuesday night, Edwin Ríos and Mota took a familiar position near the dugout. For 15 minutes, they cycled through a more extensive defensive workout featuring seven sequences and three mitts. Ríos finished by shifting from the grass to the dirt, simulating the harder high hops he could see from fielding throws at first base.
Ríos’ first exposure to Washington’s program came last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers when, like Swanson, first baseman Freddie Freeman introduced his new team to the drills.
“It’s one of those things where it’s not going to kill you — it’s low impact and keeps you ready,” Ríos told the Tribune. “It’s part of the routine, just like you wouldn’t skip out on a cage routine. Why would you do it for defense?”
Mota’s pregame responsibilities involve working with both the pitchers and infielders. Even splitting his time between the two groups, he always makes sure to be available when needed, something players notice.
“That goes a long way when he’s willing to put something down to get out there with you and what you need,” Ríos said. “I told him when spring started, ‘Hey, man, get me out there and let’s keep that routine going to make that a thing where it’s in my DNA.’”
Ríos knows he needs to stay on top of the little things because he hasn’t regularly been in the lineup. As he completed his pregame work with Mota on Tuesday, Swanson walked by on his return trip to the outfield batting cages and gave Ríos a fist bump.
The work on the little things never stops.
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