PHOENIX – When manager Craig Counsell landed in Arizona this spring, his imprint on this Cubs team was much deeper than it had been a year ago.
In his first spring at the helm for the Cubs, Counsell had made some coaching hires, and president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer had sought his perspective on offseason moves. But Counsell was still getting to know the organization. And his go-to answer when asked about the challenge was that he was still learning names.
Now, he has the names down. And he held the club to account last September when he said the Cubs “should try to be building 90-win teams,” calling that the “playoff standard.”
This offseason, Hoyer and his baseball operations group improved the roster, within budget constraints. And as of Wednesday, PECOTA projected the Cubs to win about 91 games, even after they dropped two to the Dodgers in the Tokyo Series last week. Now, it’s Counsell’s job to lead them to the playoffs.
The Cubs re-open the regular season Thursday against the Diamondbacks.
“If you’re in this world and you’ve gotten to this place, you are a highly competitive person,” Counsell said during spring training. “And so highly competitive people love expectations, they thrive on them. I always think it’s all good. You feel like once you get expectations, you’ve earned them in some capacity.”
The heat isn’t on Counsell, in the second year of a five-year contract, like it is on Hoyer, who is entering the last year of his deal. And managers can’t make as much of an impact as owners, who dictate team spending. Forbes ranked the Cubs as MLB’s fourth-most valuable team (worth an estimated $4.6 billion), but they’re No. 13 in payroll, according to Roster Resource.
While it’s difficult to quantify exactly how much a manager can affect a team’s record, conventional wisdom suggests that only a handful of them will push a team’s win total one way or another. But with the “marginal value of a win” becoming one of the Cubs’ buzz phrases this past winter, it’s reasonable to expect that in this juncture of the Cubs’ competitive window, every win will matter.
When the Cubs fired David Ross a year and a half ago in order to sign Counsell to a record $40 million contract – Dave Roberts’ extension with the Dodgers has since surpassed the average annual value of Counsell’s deal – they signaled a belief in Counsell’s ability to push them over the hump.
Last season, the Brewers won the division by a whopping 10 games, making it irrelevant that the Cubs performed about to projections, rather than exceeding them as they had the year before when the same record put them out of the playoffs by one game.
“We signed him to a five year deal, not a one year deal, for a reason,” Hoyer said of Counsell right after the season. “I think that the impact he’s going to have on the organization will be tremendous. And it’ll be felt year after year, after year, after year. Being able to come in, establish a culture, help us get better with processes and things like that, I think he’s going to have a huge impact.”
It was clear in Year 1 that Counsell wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. He almost immediately made it known sitting in the research and development department when he thought a specific interface could use improvement.
He’s pushed behind the scenes and then spoken plainly in his media availability. Now, the fanbase is yearning to see the results on the field. And if the Cubs perform to expectations, even a swing of one or two games could make a difference in their postseason standing. Counsell’s every in-game will be hyper-analyzed. And he’ll have the chance to help his team wipe away the bad taste of last year.