Chicago Cubs Boss Knows Speeches Don’t Win Games
The Chicago Cubs just missed a playoff berth last season. The Cubs fell out of the NL Wild Card race in the final two weeks. The same went for their faint hopes of winning the NL Central.
The Milwaukee Brewers won the division last season but fell in the NL Wild Card playoffs. The Cubs pulled off one of the biggest most of the offseason by signing former Brewers manager Craig Counsel to the largest contract for a manager in baseball history.
But signing Counsell away from the Brewers doesn’t automatically make the Cubs’ rival up north a worse team. It also doesn’t automatically make the Cubs a better team.
At some point this spring Counsell will address his entire team for the first time, most likely when the full roster reports this week.
Counsell doesn’t expect that speech to change the entire direction of the franchise in one felled swoop. This isn’t a movie, after all.
“There’s no speech that changes the world right now,” Counsell said in an article in USA Today. “That’s a big misconception, I think, about sports. They make movies about it, but it’s really about us connecting as a group.”
The Cubs know Counsell all too well. He took over as Brewers manager in 2015 and lasted longer than most managers, as his contract with Milwaukee ended after last season.
He went 707-625 and he led the Brewers to five playoff appearances in his last six seasons, including three National League Central titles. Those three division titles came at the Cubs’ expense.
Counsell then took advantage of free agency, so to speak. He interviewed with several teams before the Cubs, stealthily, hired him for $40 million over five years and fired David Ross the same day.
It is Counsell’s job to get the Cubs back into the postseason on a regular basis, as he did with the Brewers. The Cubs won the 2016 World Series. But the last time the Cubs made the playoffs in a full season was in 2018. Their last playoff berth was in the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season.
One speech won’t get the job done. But Counsell has the track record that gives the Cubs hope that one season, or multiple seasons, will get the Cubs back into contention for a World Series.
