Is Craig Counsell’s Seat Getting Warm as Mediocre Play Continues?
This is more of a thought exercise than anything, a way for me to work through an idea that wormed its way into my brain over the weekend. As I was sitting there thinking about the Cubs’ disappointing play in the second half and the way the Brewers are steamrolling the rest of the league, I started to wonder where blame would be placed. While it ultimately falls on the players to perform, we all know there’s got to be a scapegoat when results fall well short of expectations.
Though the Cubs are still firmly in playoff contention with a winning percentage that projects to 92 wins, they are 7-8 in August and 13-14 since the break. In case you’re not great at math, being under .500 for those stretches puts a dent in the projections. Were they to continue at that pace over the rest of the season, they’d finish at 89-73 (.549). That’s still well ahead of the Mets (.532) and Reds (.520), and even limping into the postseason still gives them a chance.
The optics, however, aren’t great. Not only have the Cubs played a decidedly mediocre brand of baseball as their best hitters slog through a collective slump, but it’s happening under a manager whose old team is playing better than ever two years after he defected. Even if the Brewers’ incredible play isn’t about addition by subtraction as far as Craig Counsell is concerned, there have been questions about how much of his team’s success was actually due to Pat Murphy.
With a 707-635 record during his tenure in Milwaukee, Counsell is the team’s all-time winningest manager. He was named as the club’s skipper on May 4, 2015, after Ron Roenicke was fired, so all but 61 of those wins came with Murphy — Counsell’s head coach at Notre Dame — by his side as bench coach. The Brewers had a losing record in 2016 (73-89) and again in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign (29-31), but won no fewer than 86 games in six other seasons with Counsell and Murphy at the helm.
The Brewers won 10 more games than the Cubs last season and are currently eight games up in the win column with a lower payroll and decidedly fewer household names. Again, it’s a really bad look for baseball operations on the North Side.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how ownership extended Jed Hoyer too early, with his new multiyear contract sapping any aggressiveness he might have otherwise displayed at the deadline. I don’t buy that, as Hoyer wasn’t suddenly going to change his stripes even if the situation called for a change in tack. What the new deal may signal, though, is that the fat finger of blame is going to have to be pointed somewhere other than the front office.
Well, I suppose Carter Hawkins’ seat might be getting a bit warm. I’m among more than a few folks who see him as falling in lockstep with Hoyer rather than offering more bellicose beliefs to counter the milquetoast machinations of his boss. Where the old regime under Theo Epstein felt like a flat hierarchy with two former Red Sox front office phenoms, the current pairing atop baseball ops feels more like a subordinate relationship. I’m not in the room, so this is just guesswork with whatever level of education you’d like to believe informs it.
All that said, the easiest and most obvious scapegoat is the man Hoyer made the highest-paid manager of all time with a surprise hire that blindsided even the most connected reporters in the sport. Known as a players’ manager and someone who prioritizes relationships, Counsell has also been lauded for learning the analytical side of the game as an advisor to the Brewers’ front office prior to stepping in as manager. He hasn’t done anything to contradict those ideas in Chicago, though his stubbornness is hardly a departure from his predecessor.
“In Toronto, I stated very clearly — we’ve got a pretty good group of outfielders here, and Owen’s got to cross that bar,” Counsell said on Saturday. “We’re going to play the best guys every day.”
After starting as the DH in his debut against the Blue Jays last Thursday, Caissie rode the pine all weekend in a hard-fought series against the Pirates. Then he came in to pinch-hit for Matt Shaw, who has been the Cubs’ best hitter in the second half. Not Kyle Tucker, who has looked lost at the plate and whose body language shows his frustration all too clearly. Matchups, schmatchups, I can’t remember a dude who looked more like he needed a break.
Then there was the egregiously awful called third strike against Seiya Suzuki in Friday’s loss to the Pirates that probably would have gotten another manager run from the game. Suzuki is routinely victimized by bad calls and this was one of the worst you’ll see, plus it happened to lead off the bottom of the 8th with the score tied at two apiece. If that’s not a time to show your players you’ve got their backs and to try to light a spark, I don’t know what is.
Some of this is admittedly my own frustration with the way things have gone, but I don’t think it’s the least bit far-fetched to think the Cubs would be willing to eat some of that big salary and go in a different direction. We know Hoyer is here to stay for a while longer, so his head won’t be rolling no matter what happens down the stretch. As unlikely as it is right now that Counsell would be sacked at the end of this season, I do think the temperature of his seat is a lot higher than anyone could have imagined just a few weeks ago.
