After leading the Miklwaukee Brewers to six straight winning seasons, manager Craig Counsell stays … [+] close to home with a five-year, $40 million deal with the Chicago Cubs. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
As baseball general managers gathered in Scottsdale Monday to talk trades and free agents during their annual meetings, managers stole the headlines.
Especially Craig Counsell, who cracked a glass ceiling of suppressed salaries by accepting a record deal from a division rival.
When his contract expired at the end of the 2023 baseball season, Wisconsin native Counsell wondered how to stay close to home, sign a mega-deal contract with a contending club, and strike a blow for teams to pay managers better.
Counsell, who had reached the playoffs five times in nine years as manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, met all of his objectives by signing a five-year Chicago Cubs contract worth $40 million, according to Jeff Passan of ESPN. It’s more than twice as much as the $3.5 million he earned in the last season of his Milwaukee deal, according to Passan.
That makes him the best-paid pilot in baseball history, according to NBC Sports Chicago, and strikes a blow for all major-league managers.
According to Bob Nightengale of USA TODAY, Hall of Fame manager Joe Torre held the previous record for managers, earning $7.5 million from the New York Yankees after winning four world championships in a five-year span from 1996-2000.
Nightengale wrote in August that six active managers were earning less than $1 million and 15 were earning $1.75 million on less. Even Dave Roberts, with more wins than any manager in the history of the Los Angeles Dodgers was earning $3.25 million in 2023, Nightengale claimed in his article, with Atlanta’s Brian Snitker, an organization man who won a world championship in 2021, at $1.2 million.
Many college coaches make more than major-league managers, with USA TODAY Sports research revealing 10 college coaches with salaries of $1.2 million, led by Vanderbilt’s Tim Corbin at $2.47 million per season.
Craig Counsell makes his point during a 2023 playoff game between his Milwaukee Brewers and the … [+] Arizona Diamondbacks. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Counsell, a former infielder who had been an activist in the Players Association, replaces David Ross, who had a year left on his contract, in Chicago.
The season had ended on a sour note for the Cubs, who lost 15 of their final 22 games to miss the playoffs by one game.
Although Ross was a local folk hero in Chicago, where he was a catcher on the 2016 World Championship team, Cubs management seized the opportunity to sign Counsell, who had been talking to the Brewers, Guardians, and Mets after his Milwaukee contract expired.
Counsell, 53, faced several tough choices: staying put as pilot of a small-market club that could not compete for top free agents; enjoying the comfort of continuing to work with David Stearns, who just jumped from the Brewers to the Mets as their new president of baseball operations; or taking the big-money, big-city but midwestern appeal of the Cubs, with Wrigley Field only about 90 miles from both Milwaukee’s American Family Field and the manager’s Wisconsin home.
Joining the arch-rival Cubs did not sit well with Brewers fans. One of them even vandalized the sign at Craig Counsell Park in his hometown of Whitefish Bay. Counsell and his family have strong roots in Milwaukee and he had been reluctant to relocate.
Although Chicago’s 83-79 record was its best since 2019, ownership remains anxious to restore the glory days of 2016, when the Cubs won a World Series for the first time in 108 years.
Pilfering the proven pilot of a top division rival was an opportunity it could not ignore.
With a 707-625 record, Counsell had more wins and games managed than anyone else in team history, which began in 1970 when the expansion Seattle Pilots relocated to Milwaukee.
As Brewers manager, Counsell won three NL Central titles, reached post-season play five times, and posted winning records for six straight uninterrupted seasons.
Counsell inherits a young team that occupies the National League’s oldest stadium. The Cubs have the league’s strongest far system, according to FanGraphs, and may lean heavily on that talent, depending upon its successes or failures in free agency.
Two major 2023 Cubs stars, slugger Cody Bellinger and pitcher Marcus Stroman, are free agents the team would like to keep.
Counsell’s decision set off a chain reaction of events, with both the Mets (Carlos Mendoza) and Guardians (Stephen Vogt) hiring their second choices. The Houston Astros have yet to replace the retired Dusty Baker, while the Los Angeles Angels are considering Buck Showalter and other potential replacements for the fired Phil Nevin. The Milwaukee Brewers will also have to find a new manager.
Counsell’s decision to join a division rival adds another footnote to the history of out-of-the-blue managerial moves.
Leo Durocher jumped from the Brooklyn Dodgers to the New York Giants in the middle of the 1948 season, knocking Mel Ott out of his Polo Grounds job. Cleveland and Detroit traded managers in the middle of the 1960 season, with Joe Gordon going to the Tigers for Jimmy Dykes. Johnny Keane, manager of the 1964 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, jumped league lines to replace Yogi Berra as pilot of the New York Yankees in 1965. And the Cubs of the ‘60s – tired of managers getting poor results – resorted to a rotating board of coaches for five years (it didn’t help).
