I'm not sure what DD plans to do with Swihart, but Cora made it pretty clear he didn't really want to play him that much.
The only way something substantial opens up for Swihart would seem to be if they part ways with Leon.
Unfortunately what we saw in 2018 wasn't parity, but teams either trying to contend or trying to suck. Two teams that tanked hard and then won the World Series a few years later (Cubs, Astros) probably had something to do with that.
I did a little research on this once, and I found that for 8 or 9 years in a row, the AL manager of the year was with the team that had the biggest increase in wins from the year before.
See, while the rest of us thought it was an OK signing, nothing to get excited about one way or the other, you were flipping and flopping with your opinion based on how he was going.
(Teasing.)
JD had a great offensive season. But I'm puzzled why you would choose him over other players that had higher WAR, like Bregman as sk7326 mentioned, who had a 7.6 to JD's 5.9. It seems like you're giving more weight to run production.