MLB free agency 2023: Chicago Cubs pull off a coup with Craig Counsell, who emerges as the real winner

As the first full week of the MLB offseason kicked off — and with it, the general managers meetings in Scottsdale, Arizona — the calculus for Craig Counsell seemed to be as follows:

• Even before the season ended, he was widely known to be a highly coveted — perhaps the most highly coveted — manager, the rare coach to garner impending free-agent intrigue. After nine years with his hometown Milwaukee Brewers, Counsell’s contract had run out, and should he want to continue managing, he would have options.

• The Brewers would want him back. There seemed to be little question whether Milwaukee would try to retain Counsell. In 2015, he took over a middling Brewers club that then posted a .531 winning percentage under his skippership and made the postseason five of the past six years.

• He loves Milwaukee. In April, Counsell became the franchise leader in games managed for the team located 15 minutes from where he and his wife grew up, attended high school and continue to live. He ended his playing career with the Brewers, and they are the only team he has worked for since retiring as a player.

• The big-money Mets were also very interested in him. Counsell’s former boss, David Stearns, returned from his single-season sabbatical to take over baseball operations for his hometown New York Mets. And once Buck Showalter was dismissed after Year 2 of his three-year contract, the team was in need of a new manager.

With team owner Steve Cohen’s deep pockets, the Mets were desperate to get it right after cycling through four managers over the past five seasons. And with Stearns’ familiarity with Counsell, the manager's choice seemed to be between prioritizing comfort and home to stay in the small-market Milwaukee area or stepping into the spotlight to take over a team with greater financial resources.

Instead, Counsell found a way to do both: make more money and, presumably, have more money at his disposal without leaving the Midwest. After reportedly interviewing with the Cleveland Guardians and eliciting at least some interest from the Houston Astros, Counsell ended up with a team no one seemed to realize was even in the market for a new manager.

The Chicago Cubs will make Counsell the highest-paid manager in Major League Baseball — and provide him the stability he clearly values — by reportedly giving him a five-year, $40 million contract to succeed David Ross, whom they fired Monday to make room.

If you wanted to award winners and losers of this bombshell move, Counsell would emerge clearly on top. His esteem within the industry afforded him the opportunity to be choosy about a job that is best known for being unstable and highly competitive.

Rather than return for a 10th season with Milwaukee, which reportedly was unwilling to go above $5.5 million per year, Counsell will take over a club that finished nine games back of the Brewers in 2023 — but with a better run differential and a payroll that was more than $60 million higher.

For the Cubs, this is eerily similar to the coup they pulled off after the 2014 season, when they hired Joe Maddon — also on a five-year deal — after his successful stint in Tampa. That, too, required dismissing a manager, Rick Renteria, who had time left on his contract, but as Chicago fans will well remember: It worked.

The 2016 championship club was the last great Cubs team. That core failed to repeat, and as those players dispersed in recent years, the team has failed to figure out how to fully transition to the next successful iteration. Ross, who was the team's catcher in 2016, had been one of few remaining connections, along with starting pitcher Kyle Hendricks.

But last winter, under president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, the Cubs committed $300 million to free agents in an effort to contend again — and they did, overcoming a slow start to be buyers at the deadline until a September collapse saw them finish one game out of the NL wild-card picture.

They’ve since lost comeback player of the year Cody Bellinger and their best pitcher in the first half, Marcus Stroman, to free agency. So the Cubs need more talent — but if they get it, Counsell is the right person to make the most of it. With the St. Louis Cardinals left trying to make sense of their disastrous 2023 season and the Brewers reeling from the loss of not only Counsell but also Brandon Woodruff, who is likely to miss all of next season after shoulder surgery, the NL Central is a wide-open field. The exciting, young Cincinnati Reds certainly figuring themselves players as well. Still, there’s no reason the Cubs can’t muscle their way to the top of the projections with bold moves. Bringing in the consensus top manager on a record contract is a good first step — as long as there is more to come.

For the Brewers, this is clearly a blow. It’s always a little difficult to tell what the team’s ambition is based on the roster, given that their success has typically come from out-performing their player talent (at least in the regular season). That’s precisely why the manager and front office got so much credit during Milwaukee's recent run. It’ll be interesting to see whom Matt Arnold, in charge of baseball operations since Stearns stepped down, identifies as someone who can emulate Counsell’s ability to maximize the team’s potential.

In all of this, the Mets are perhaps the most confusing element to evaluate. Their relationship to Counsell was always one of hope — that he would end the revolving door of managers and be an unstoppable force when paired with Cohen’s money. It seemed like a simple enough formula for success: guy who was good with few resources given access to far more. The cause for optimism was obvious.

But even if Counsell considered personal factors — such as staying close to home — in choosing the Cubs, the Mets still should’ve been an attractive destination for available managers. Cohen can afford to pay handsomely, Stearns was getting his first opportunity to hand-pick a skipper after inheriting (and sticking by) Counsell in Milwaukee, and the team is chock-full of talent — even if the question of contention as soon as 2024 is a murky one. So while it seems surprising that they went with Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza, reported just before it was known that Counsell would go to Chicago, the Mets must’ve identified something about him that seemed especially promising.

But for both Mendoza and Counsell, the key to their success going forward will be how their respective clubs approach the rest of the offseason. Even the best manager is only a good start.