NEWSLETTER
Well dang. If your hope was that the Chicago Cubs would be able to snag a coach or two or three off of the Milwaukee Brewers’ staff to accompany Craig Counsell’s transition, those hopes have been dashed.
Per Jesse Rogers, the Cubs won’t be getting even a single one of those coaches:
Like I said, dang. It’s not quite a SUPER BUMMED reaction. Just a light dang.
Because on the one hand, you’d like Counsell to be able to port over as much of his infrastructure as possible – whatever helps him do what he does, and whatever will help him be as comfortable and successful as possible.
On the other hand, the Cubs were almost certainly going to want to keep a good chunk of their coaching staff in place for continuity purposes, and with no one joining Counsell, the front office and Counsell both might be forced to branch out a bit and bring in new voices. It’s *possible* that would make the overall success with Counsell even more fruitful than if they’d just stayed inside a couple closed loops. Plus, Counsell was already not going to be able to take his right-hand man with him, as Pat Murphy just got bumped from bench coach to the new manager seat in Milwaukee.
We’ll see where this goes. At his presser on Monday, Counsell said he was “behind” in this process of filling out the coaching staff, but for good reasons: because his hiring process played out so quickly, he wasn’t able to give the coaching staff questions the thoughtful attention they needed. So he’s going slow now on purpose, to make sure he gets it right. And if Counsell believes this process of getting the staff right is critical to his success as a manager, then by all means, take your time. The Cubs may miss out on some candidates if things go too slowly, but there’s certainly a balance that can be struck.
My guess is there was at least some hope that a coach or two could come over from Milwaukee, so this news at least moves that process forward. I bet we get coaching staff news this or next week.
