New Chicago Cubs manager and former Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell will be introduced at a press conference on Monday, according to a Cubs press release.
Counsel will be introduced at 10 a.m. Monday, according to the release. Once the conference begins, it will be streamed in the video player above.
Counsell, a longtime MLB veteran, took over the Brewers in 2015 and led them to five playoff appearances in nine seasons at the helm. The Brewers reportedly offered Counsell a contract worth $5.5 million a season to stay in Milwaukee, but instead he signed a five-year deal with the Cubs that would pay him $8 million a season (a record for a major league manager). It is reported that.
Who is Craig Counsell?
Counsell played as an infielder during his 16-year playing career, including a lengthy stint with the Brewers. He won World Series rings with the Marlins in 1997 and the Diamondbacks in 2001, hitting .255/.342/.344 in his MLB career. He had 42 home runs, 390 RBIs, and 103 stolen bases in 5,488 total at-bats.
After his playing career ended in 2011, Counsell worked in the Brewers’ front office for two seasons and then served as a color commentator for Brewers broadcasts for one season.
He was appointed as the team’s manager in May 2015. The Brewers won three district titles under Counsell and reached the postseason in five of the past six seasons, including an NLCS appearance in 2018.
That season, the Brewers finished tied with the Cubs for first place in the National League Central Division and won a one-game playoff at Wrigley Field. The Brewers were then dispatched from the playoffs by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
This year, the Brewers once again won the Central Division crown, but were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in two games in October.
In his nine seasons as manager of the Brewers, Counsell had a record of 707 wins and 625 losses, the most wins in team history.
Rumors abounded throughout the season regarding Counsell’s future at the club as he was in the final year of his contract. David Stearns left the Brewers to join the New York Mets’ front office, and speculation surfaced that Counsell was involved in the job after the club fired Buck Showalter. It got even higher.
Counsell is now aiming to get the Cubs back to the postseason for the first time since 2020. The Cubs fell just short this year, finishing behind the Philadelphia Phillies, Miami Marlins and Arizona Diamondbacks in the wild-card race.
The Cubs haven’t won in the playoffs since losing to the Dodgers in five games in 2017. The Cubs lost in the 2018 National League Wild Card Game and were swept by the Marlins in a best-of-three series at Wrigley Field in the 2020 playoffs.
Milwaukee faces the reality that Craig Counsell is managing the Cubs.
The first signs of dissatisfaction with Craig Counsell’s decision to leave the Milwaukee Brewers to manage the Chicago Cubs came in his hometown, on the Little League field that bears his name.
The word “donkey” was spray-painted above Counsel’s name on a sign outside the baseball stadium in Whitefish Bay, a Milwaukee suburb where he grew up and still lives. The sign was covered up Tuesday morning, a day after the Cubs signed Counsel to a five-year contract worth more than $40 million.
The Brewers now must continue to win in Major League Baseball’s smallest market without the manager who led them to sustained success.
“We’ve got something really good,” Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio said Monday. “I credit Craig for helping build that and adding all the coaches and everyone staying. So we can continue to have a great clubhouse culture and we can We’re going to look for a coach who can continue to win and hopefully get us through the hump in the playoffs.”
Counsell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week that the opportunity for new professional challenges and proximity to Chicago made the opportunity attractive.
“As I went through this process, I think it became clear to me that I needed and wanted a new professional challenge,” Counsell said. “At the same time, I’m grateful to be a part of this community. And it has nothing to do with baseball, so hopefully it will continue. I’m looking forward to joining a new community and We hope to have a positive impact on our community as well, but as we went through this experience, it became clear that we needed a new challenge.”
But the fact that he went just 90 miles south to the Brewers’ biggest rival made his exit doubly painful for fans.
“In the first Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, in the scene where they’re digging to find the Ark of the Covenant, Indiana Jones opens this big tomb-like thing and looks down and says, “Snake? “Why did it have to be a snake?” said Kay Keneally, of Waukesha, Wis., who has held partial season tickets to the Brewers since 2006. Why did it have to be the Cubs? ” “
Laura Hemming, a partial season ticket holder since the mid-1990s, said the news was “kind of gut-wrenching.”
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