PITTSBURGH — Dansby Swanson, the Gold Glove shortstop for the Chicago Cubs, has personified the club’s streakiness at various points of an up-and-down season with so many twists and turns still ahead.The current cliffhanger is the Aug. 3 trade deadline, the last meaningful opportunity for the Cubs to dramatically change their roster before the playoffs. Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins, the organization’s top baseball executives, are planning to buy with a singular focus on pitching.Steady and spectacular and dedicated to his craft on defense, Swanson embodies the group of position players the Cubs have assembled. Now in the fourth season of a seven-year, $177 million contract that includes a full no-trade clause, Swanson kept working through an extended slump and the calls for him to be benched.This is what a deep, playoff-caliber lineup is supposed to look like: Swanson bats at or near the bottom of the order, yet leads the team with 60 RBIs and remains on pace to finish with around 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases.The extent to which Chicago’s front office is willing to pay for premium pitching is unclear, which is how Saturday’s conversation with The Athletic began inside PNC Park’s visitors’ clubhouse, starting with a question about whether the club has earned a significant reinvestment at the trade deadline.Swanson: It’s always an interesting perspective of what everyone thinks should be done. Even just the question — and I’m not giving you a hard time — it’s like: “Have we earned it?” We have a top-five record in baseball, and you could argue that we haven’t really played as well as we can, so maybe that answers the question in its own right.Outside of a horrible 10-game stretch, we’ve won games, and that’s without most of us performing to our capabilities, which is really a testament to how good the team is. We can sit here and say, “Oh, well, this could be better or that could be better.” But the more you’re around the game, you understand it’s not as easy as we make it seem, in terms of, “Oh, if we just do this and this.” Because they’re balancing so many different things and scenarios.Everyone always wants the team to drastically improve, right? Especially with a team of our caliber, so it will be interesting to see what shakes out. It’s not always the sexiest things that are the best things. I’ve been a part of teams that have done moves that weren’t substantial, but they worked.‘We have just as good a chance as anybody’Swanson was a key member of the 2021 Atlanta Braves team that went into the All-Star break with a 44-45 record. Alex Anthopoulos, Atlanta’s lead baseball executive, still acquired Joc Pederson from the Cubs during that midseason break, which would begin Hoyer’s franchise-changing sell-off. The Braves then kept adding valuable role players that July, setting the stage for their run to a World Series title.Hoyer’s front office executed multiple trades at last year’s deadline, improving the roster incrementally without putting together that one blockbuster deal that shocked the baseball world. The Cubs would go on to beat the San Diego Padres in the wild-card round, then lose to the Milwaukee Brewers in a five-game series.The question this deadline is not whether the Cubs have earned some reinforcements. It’s more wondering how much the front office is willing to sacrifice in terms of projected future value.Swanson: I think that they will 100 percent be well-intentioned to do the right thing. I don’t know what the right thing is. I don’t know what the right piece, or pieces, are.It’s always such an interesting time, too. I was even thinking about this the other day. My name has popped up in trade speculation before, a long time ago in the past, and I have gotten traded before, but that was more offseason stuff. It’s such an interesting dynamic how there’s potential to maybe even affect people in this clubhouse. It’s staying, in a way, respectful of where their mental space is at.At the end of the day, we know that if we improve our team, then we have just as good a chance as anybody. At least that’s how we all feel.Dansby Swanson, who hit an RBI-double in Saturday’s win over the Pirates, is confident in the Cubs’ front office ahead of the trade deadline. (Justin Berl / Getty Images)‘Iron sharpens iron’The playoff projection systems strongly suggest the Cubs won’t catch the Brewers in the National League Central race. That would mean not getting a first-round bye, an important factor that Hoyer has referenced when determining how aggressive the front office should be at the trade deadline.But the numbers can’t determine everything. Hoyer has also alluded to the eye test of how the club is performing, player health and where the roster can get better.Take Saturday’s 11-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates as an example. Pete Crow-Armstrong (4-for-5 with two doubles and his 23rd home run) continues to produce at an MVP level. By throwing six scoreless innings, Shota Imanaga outperformed reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes, the night after Matthew Boyd’s strong start enabled the Cubs to outlast Jared Jones in a 3-2 victory in 10 innings. In back-to-back games at PNC Park, Gavin Hollowell and Javier Assad became the 11th and 12th Cubs relievers to notch a save this year.In the postseason, these qualities can be accentuated.Swanson: Defense is obviously our identity. Once again, you just look at the amount of runs we scored with subpar performance from a lot of guys. And I don’t say that in a disrespectful way, because I’m in that same group of what you would expect and what you are getting. And yet we’re still producing a top-(five) offense in baseball. Imagine if those things start rolling.In ’21, that’s what happened for us (in Atlanta). The last six-and-a-half weeks of the season, we all just caught fire and the rest is history.This team has a certain factor about it that just wins games even when we shouldn’t. The belief — just consistently winning games by any means necessary — that plays well for October.The other thing is you’re not really going to see much better velocity and pitching than in the Central, if you think about the guys the Brewers are throwing. Think about what (we’ve seen in Pittsburgh). Think about what some of the Reds starters throw out there. The Cardinals have thrown the ball well. They have guys that throw hard out of the bullpen. That’s an iron-sharpens-iron thing going into October, too.‘It doesn’t always look pretty’Every year, it seems, there’s at least one big-market team that wins the offseason and then collapses under the weight of expectations, injuries and underperformance.Alex Bregman hasn’t yet played up to his five-year, $175 million contract. Edward Cabrera, one of 12 pitchers on the injured list, has yet to show why the Cubs were so determined to make that winter trade with the Miami Marlins. Cade Horton and Justin Steele have combined to throw 7 ⅓ innings this season. Yet, the Cubs are 14 games over .500 and holding the top wild-card spot in a competitive NL field.Why did this season not go off the rails? How did the pitching staff hold up and the clubhouse stay together?Swanson: Leadership. I say that just in terms of how this team operates. There’s a lot of self-sustaining guys. Not in a selfish way, but just professionals. Other than health on the mound, position players have played. We’ve all gotten a couple days here and there, some mental days or whatever, but we’ve taken the field. That adds up throughout a season. That’s how you withstand the crap that goes sideways. You just keep showing up and trust in this process we have to win games. It leads you to this point. It doesn’t always look pretty or look fun, but it gets the job done.