Craig Counsell knows Chicago Cubs fans deserve better than this
CHICAGO — The stillness of Wrigley Field gave Craig Counsell a jolt of energy. Commuting from his Wisconsin home, the Chicago Cubs manager regularly visited the Wrigleyville campus last offseason, getting to know his new co-workers and familiarizing himself with the organization's infrastructure. The empty ballpark reawakened a sense of history and possibility.
In the quiet moments, Counsell could imagine the iconic stadium pulsating. For generations, the Cubs have sold that vision of a picturesque ballpark in the middle of an urban neighborhood. It's the ivy, the perfectly manicured green grass, summers in Chicago, the day drinking and nightlife wrapped around the games, and the roars from the crowd. Even in the dead of winter, those thoughts come alive.
And then the reality of the season hits.
The Cubs concluded their 149th National League campaign with Sunday afternoon's 3-0 loss to the Cincinnati Reds , a 10-inning game staged out of financial obligation rather than pure competition. One week earlier, the Cubs had been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, a gradual process that added up with each injury, blown save and hitting slump. Murphy's Bleachers, the popular sports bar at the corner of Sheffield and Waveland, summed it up on an exterior message board: ""
Counsell knows they deserve better than this mediocre product. Big-market expectations are part of what lured him to the Friendly Confines — the chance to be challenged, scrutinized and celebrated for doing something massive.
"That feeling just doesn't go away," Counsell said. "That fires me up. It's like an internal thing that gets you going because it's a great place to come (to work). That means you naturally envision wanting to be great for all the people that love coming here as well."
No one will remember the 2024 Cubs as a great team, nor will they go down as a bad team, another sign of a franchise stuck in the middle. The two highest-paid players, Cody Bellinger and Dansby Swanson , produced good-but-not-great seasons. Justin Steele didn't stay healthy enough to put together a Cy Young Award-caliber year. The Opening Day bullpen quickly imploded.
This year's roster featured one All-Star selection ( Shota Imanaga ) and zero players who will receive serious MVP consideration. Young talent like Pete Crow-Armstrong , Miguel Amaya , Michael Busch and Porter Hodge needed time to learn and develop at the major-league level. As much as Kyle Hendricks deserved Saturday's send-off, even he would acknowledge that some young pitcher should have already taken his job.
Counsell was supposed to be the major difference between this Cubs team and the one that finished last season one game out of the playoffs. Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer waited until Counsell's contract with the Milwaukee Brewers expired and shocked the baseball world by firing manager David Ross. The initial return from Counsell's five-year, $40 million contract is an 83-79 record, or the exact same mark as last year under Ross' leadership.
"It's never going to be about one person," Counsell said. "That is my job — to help us win baseball games — so I should be expected to do that, absolutely. We didn't do it this year. We won 83 games. That wasn't enough to make the playoffs. That wasn't enough to give our fans October baseball. That's what we should be striving to do. That's what we should do on a consistent basis, in my mind. That means we got work to do."
The Brewers, meanwhile, never spent a day under .500 this season, even without Counsell running the bullpen, or Corbin Burnes or Brandon Woodruff throwing a single pitch for them, or Christian Yelich playing after the trade deadline. The Brewers held at least a five-game lead in the division for all of August and September, clinching the NL Central title with 11 days remaining on the schedule.
Counsell seemingly used that moment to send a message to Hoyer's front office and the Ricketts family ownership group, declaring: "We should be trying to build 90-win teams here."
The sport's highest-paid manager views part of his job responsibilities as applying what he learned in Milwaukee and making recommendations to the front office: "I don't have to be the decision-maker there, but I think I can help." Counsell described his relationship with Hoyer, general manager Carter Hawkins and the rest of the baseball operations department as a work in progress.
"We share information," Counsell said. "As we've gotten to understand each other, it gets easier and it gets better. Knowing each other helps you kind of get to what we need to do quicker. That process has always been helpful. There's no question we started the offseason without that. And I started the offseason without really any knowledge of the organization. From that perspective, the offseason for me was slow and late."
This offseason starts now. Counsell is planning to evaluate his coaches this week, a review process that will involve several holdovers from Ross' staff. Hoyer has already signaled that the Cubs intend to upgrade their rotation. An offense that was shut out 16 times and suppressed by Wrigley Field's unpredictable hitting environment needs more power. Bellinger's opt-in or opt-out decision will impact the degree of financial flexibility within ownership's budget for baseball operations.
Counsell rarely raises his voice, but it will be heard this winter. The way they've done things usually doesn't work. This franchise, which opened in 1876, has only three World Series championships, and just one in the last 116 years. The Cubs haven't hosted a playoff game with fans since 2018. Their last postseason win came in 2017. Yet this season more than 2.9 million fans still showed up to Wrigley Field, where the main thing should always be the main thing.
"We're a baseball team," Counsell said. "We got to figure out how to win baseball games. We've got a group of fans and a fan base that demands it, that pushes us for it. We want to provide that for them, absolutely."
(Photo: Matt Dirksen / Chicago Cubs / )
