Brewers hire Craig Counsell as manager after firing Ron Roenicke
The dreadful Milwaukee Brewers won Sunday for the third time in four games, which would have counted for news had the organization not fired its manager within hours of that subtle – and likely futile – uptick.
Ron Roenicke was let go 25 games into the season. He is a reasonable and competent leader and this is by the usual standards a hasty decision. The Brewers won only seven of those games, however, and have been a poor team – or at least have shown poorly on the field – since last summer.
The Brewers hired Craig Counsell to replace Roenicke, according to a report from Fox Sports. He will manage the Brewers on Monday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Counsell retired in 2012 and became special assistant to Brewers general manager Doug Melvin. He played the last five of a 16-year career with the Brewers, and now will stand before a group that is either not very good or has desperately underachieved.
There'd been injuries and slumps and bad luck, of course, but mostly there was the collapse of 2014 – the Brewers were 51-32 and 6½ games ahead of the NL Central on June 28, only to finish a distant third – and the staggering start of 2015. Though the club (somewhat surprisingly) exercised the 2016 option on his contract in mid-March, Roenicke, in the view of most, would have to have the Brewers playing well early in the season to continue in his job.
They didn't, in part because their best players – Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy – were felled by injuries, in part because the Brewers were among the worst teams in the game at scoring and preventing runs. In what would be the final 56 games of his four-plus seasons in Milwaukee, Roenicke lost 40 of them, and on Sunday night general manager Doug Melvin released a statement that read, in part, "It's all about wins and losses."
The rest lives with the job's inconveniences, which is to cope with injuries and slumps and bad luck. Everybody has them. It was Roenicke's turn, the Brewers responded by playing .280 ball, and here we are.
Speculation on Roenicke's replacement immediately ran toward Counsell, the 44-year-old assistant to Melvin. Counsell's baseball intellect is highly regarded. His final season as a player was Roenicke's first as manager, in 2011, when the Brewers took the St. Louis Cardinals to six games in the National League championship series. The Brewers haven't been to the postseason since, a three-year drought that – at 7-18 and 11½ games behind the Cardinals – appears headed for four.
If not for Counsell, who has not managed before, there were more veteran candidates who may have been available to Melvin. Ron Gardenhire managed the Minnesota Twins for 13 seasons before being replaced this winter by Paul Molitor. Dusty Baker and Ozzie Guillen would bring cache and charisma.
The Brewers would appear to have the talent to be at least presentable. Gomez returned from the disabled list this weekend. Aramis Ramirez was terrible in April, but has been better over the past week. Ryan Braun has four home runs in the past six days. The rotation – Kyle Lohse, Matt Garza, Wily Peralta, Mike Fiers, Jimmy Nelson – is presumably better than the five-plus ERA it's posted.
By the time the Brewers put a few wins together, Melvin already had started the process of replacing Roenicke.
"I told Doug I wished it would have happened a week ago," Roenicke told MLB.com. "I would have understood it better then.
"I understand that it's my responsibility whether I did a good job or not. I feel like I did everything I could do, but it's still the responsibility of the manager to get this thing right."
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