DALLAS – The strong performance that Dansby Swanson turned in over the final few months of last season made his admission at the end of the campaign surprising for the Cubs’ front office. The veteran shortstop acknowledged that he had been playing through a sports hernia.

The Cubs revealed on Saturday that Swanson underwent successful core surgery to address the issue in early October. On Monday at the Winter Meetings, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer noted that Swanson – who takes extreme pride in staying on the field – kept the injury to himself for a portion of the season.

“Truly, we didn't have a good sense of it,” Hoyer said at the Hilton Anatole. “It wasn’t really until the very end of the season – after the season – where he wanted to go see specialists and told us, ‘Hey, I want to get this fixed.’ So, we were surprised, candidly – which is fine. That’s his personality. He was going to play, but clearly he was feeling something, and he wanted to get it fixed.”

Swanson is not expected to miss any time in 2025 as a result of the surgery, which was performed by Dr. Bill Meyer. In fact, the shortstop has already started to ramp up his offseason workouts, putting him on target for what the Cubs hope will be a normal Spring Training for the two-time All-Star.

Cubs manager Craig Counsell expressed that belief in his sit-down with reporters on Monday evening.

“He's fine. He's fine for the season. He's fine going into Spring Training,” Counsell said. “His offseason is obviously affected because he had surgery – the first part of his offseason certainly is affected. But he'll be ready at the start of the season.”

Swanson, 30, is heading into the third season of a seven-year, $177 million deal with the Cubs, having signed with the club in free agency after the 2022 campaign.

Swanson experienced a downturn in offensive production in his second year on the North Side of Chicago, recording 16 homers with a .701 OPS and a 98 OPS+ over 149 games. That snapped a streak of three consecutive 20-homer campaigns for the shortstop, who went deep 22 times and registered a .744 OPS (104 OPS+) in his first year with the team.

Swanson, though, was still a valuable member of the roster in 2024, finishing the season with a team-leading 4.0 WAR (per Baseball-Reference), thanks in part to his stellar defense. A two-time Gold Glove Award winner, Swanson posted a +14 mark in Statcast’s Fielding Run Value metric, tied for seventh best in MLB and the best among shortstops.

The veteran shortstop has proven quite durable over the past five years, missing only 30 games in that span.

In the first half in ‘24, Swanson dealt with a knee setback and hit .212/282/.350 while experiencing some uncharacteristic miscues in the field. As the season wore on – even with the sports hernia presenting problems at times – Swanson showed improvement both offensively (.281/.352/.443 in the second half) and at shortstop.

“It was interesting, because he played so well in the second half,” Hoyer said. “Even, I think it was the last day of the season, he made an incredible play. And then sort of after that, he talked about how he wanted to have the surgery. He felt like it was bothering him. He really kind of kept it to himself. He played through it.

“But, yeah, he had the surgery early enough – it shouldn't impact Spring Training at all.”