Man, didn’t I simply write this about Emma Hayes?
Essentially the most irritating factor in regards to the Chicago Cubs, and one which’s pushed an honest quantity of charming and good-looking followers away from Wrigley, is their insistence on appearing like a small market staff when they’re the one massive market staff within the NL Central.
They need to have spent yearly since their breakthrough in 2016, bullying the competitors round them and establishing one thing of a Chilly Conflict with the Dodgers within the Nationwide League. However the Ricketts household acquired their one trophy that they may brandish to sponsors and use it to placate their followers, and have been solely too completely satisfied to tug again the monetary strings each season till the complete core of that World Sequence-winning staff was flogged for varied youngsters inhabiting different groups’ programs. Within the meantime, their NL Central penthouse was ransacked by the Brewers and Cardinals.
The Cubs have claimed a rededication to competitiveness of late, although solely by means of B-grade free brokers and rehab initiatives, one in all which got here up trumps when Cody Bellinger produced a down-ballot MVP season. They nonetheless declare the very best is but to come back with a bunch of prospects which can be on the cusp, even when it is a staff that hasn’t produced a real star from inside since Kris Bryant got here up practically 9 years in the past.
Lastly, right now, the Cubs acted as if they’re the baddest man on Planet NL Central, and ripped away not simply probably the very best supervisor within the recreation, however employed Craig Counsell away from the staff that had been dunking on them for the previous few years, the Brewers. Not solely did the Cubs make themselves higher, and their direct rivals worse, however in addition they confirmed a ruthlessness that solely groups on the high present, not worrying about current contracts for emotions as they stuff the fully overmatched and undercooked-between-the-ears David Ross in a cardboard field labeled, “To Timbuktu.”
Make no mistake, if Ross and Counsell had swapped locations earlier than final season, the Cubs win the NL Central whereas the Brewers end up the monitor simply sufficient to overlook out on an expanded playoff area in a Nationwide League that’s principally fallow behind the three good groups in it. Ross’s incomprehensible lineup selections, loyalty to vets who weren’t producing, and complicated bullpen utilization at instances, whereas additionally not precisely instilling a self-discipline or sharpness into the remainder of the staff, held the Cubs again. Whereas Nico Hoerner has been in a position to change into a satisfactory bat and premier glove at second base beneath Ross’s watch, just about each different younger participant has starved for taking part in time after which squeezed the bat into plasma with the uncommon alternatives, and shortly headed again to the cornfields of Iowa.
In the meantime, Counsell has spent the previous decade making rooster salad out of rooster leavings in Milwaukee. His specialty is having the ability to craft a bullpen out of no matter’s supplied, having the second-best ERA this previous season. He did that with Joel Payamps, Bryse Wilson, Hoby Milner, and a set of arms that might stroll bare by means of Milwaukee Public Market and never get acknowledged.
Counsell has had the financially outgunned Brewers at or close to the highest of the Central for the previous 5 seasons, and had them one recreation from the World Sequence in 2018. Because the Brewers simply misplaced Brandon Woodruff for subsequent season already and are extra seemingly than to not commerce Corbin Burnes this winter earlier than he hits free company, dropping Counsell to the Cubs leaves them, nicely, a phrase that rhymes with “bucked.”
It ought to point out that the Cubs have severe plans for this offseason, as Counsell turned down the possibility to work for his former boss David Stearns in Queens and would have had the decide of every other open job (and possibly a couple of occupied ones). Whereas the Mets have been open about nonetheless needing a season to get again to monster kind, the Cubs couldn’t have wooed Counsell by telling him he’d have the possibility to try to flip 84-win expertise into 89 wins on the sector however in Wrigley as a substitute of the airplane hangar in Milwaukee.
And it’s about time. The Cubs ought to win the division in a stroll most seasons, and now nonetheless ought to be capable to outlast the rebuilds in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh just because these two groups gained’t spend to reinforce what they’ve developed. All of the Cubs wanted to do was act prefer it and right now they’ve.
Observe Sam on Twitter @Felsgate and on Bluesky @felsgate.bsky.social
