Counsell: 'Big gap' to close between Cubs and Brewers

Craig Counsell may have switched sides in the Chicago Cubs–Milwaukee Brewers rivalry, but the outcome in 2024 is essentially the same as it’s been for the last few years. The Cubs’ loss to the Oakland A’s on Wednesday officially gave the Brewers the National League Central crown — despite both teams still having double-digit games left to play.

With the Cubs ending Thursday seven games back in the NL wild-card race, they basically need to play perfect baseball to have any chance at the playoffs — and even that likely won’t be enough. Meanwhile, Counsell’s old group in Milwaukee will at the very least host an NL wild-card series and can still possibly earn a first-round bye.

“I think the message sent, really, is that, look, there’s a big gap,” Counsell said before the Cubs’ 7-6 over the Washington Nationals on Thursday. “I mean, they’re ahead of us by a lot. It’s a talented team. On and off the field, it’s a talented team. But there’s a big gap, and we got room to make up. There’s no question about it. Frankly, that makes it daunting.”

The Cubs haven’t made the playoffs since the shortened 2020 season and haven’t in a 162-game season since 2018, when they made it as a wild card (and were quickly bounced in the Wild Card Game). The Brewers beat them in a tie-breaker game to win the division that year, and they’ve gone on to play into October every season but 2022, taking home the division title four times in the process and three times in the last four years.

If it’s not clear, Milwaukee is well ahead of the Cubs, and has been for a while.

Counsell played a key role in the Brewers’ turnaround, having managed them from early May 2015 through the end of last season.

Outside expectations going into 2024 were that they would take a step back, as they lost Counsell to the Cubs, traded 2021 Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles and would be without two-time All-Star Brandon Woodruff all season due to shoulder surgery. Back injuries also delayed two-time NL Reliever of the Year Devin Williams’ season debut to July 28 and ended 2018 NL MVP Christian Yelich’s season after July 23.

Yet, Milwaukee has essentially been atop the NL Central standings since the start of May (they were tied for a few days). The Cubs’ 10-18 record that month gave the Brewers some breathing room, and it was never truly much of a race after that. From about mid-May on, Milwaukee held a pretty comfortable lead.

Even after the Cubs’ win Thursday gained them a game in the division standings, the Brewers are still 10 games ahead — and that comes after they finished nine games up on the North Siders last season.

“They’ve been good, man,” Counsell said. “For the division, I mean, I’d say that about the other teams, too, right? They’ve created a gap the last two years in the division. So yeah, we got room to go, man. We got work to do, for sure.”

Again, the Brewers were supposed to be the ones taking a step back. And after a trade deadline sell-off in 2021 and a rebuilding year in 2022 under president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, nearly making the postseason last year (despite a September collapse) gave some optimism that the Cubs were ready to take another step forward in 2024.

Hoyer didn’t do a ton last winter to beef up the squad and entered the season with largely the same group, though Shota Imanaga and Michael Busch have been hits. Counsell was arguably the biggest addition, and the hope was his reputation of getting the most out of his teams would follow him to Chicago.

Obviously, that hope didn’t result in a division title.

The bullpen has had its issues, as some of their expected top relievers dealt with either injuries or ineffectiveness (or both) all season. The offense also played a big factor, as the lineup as a whole looked brutal for a majority of May and June, particularly in higher-leverage situations (like with runners in scoring position).

Really, the starting pitching has been the only consistent strength all year, but that wasn’t enough to carry Counsell’s ballclub to the postseason. It currently hasn’t even been enough to have the Cubs on pace for a better record than last year’s.

Counsell didn’t spend his time Thursday afternoon blaming injuries or talking about the health of the farm system or trying to convince anyone that the team is close. He just bluntly laid out his message that the Cubs need to figure out how to improve.

“I mean, we gotta get better, man,” Counsell said. “The team we’re chasing is [11] games ahead of us [heading into Thursday]. We gotta get better. We should try to be building 90-win teams here. That’s what you have to do. That’s the playoff standard. That’s what you’ve got to get to be safely in the playoffs, safely in the tournament.

“From that perspective, we got a ways to go.”

The Cubs have been better in the last three months of the season. Since July 3, they’re 39-27, which has helped them come back from nine games below .500. But a 21-34 record across May and June isn’t good enough. That ultimately sunk the Cubs’ season, putting Counsell’s squad in a hole it couldn’t quite climb out of.

“The best teams are able to limit the stretches in which they’re down,” Dansby Swanson said. “That’s really kind of how I see it. Same as an individual going through a slump; the best ones just don’t tend to be in them for very long. So obviously, that’s something that we can get better at and continue to push through on.”

“We had that pretty long stretch of just disappointing games,” Cody Bellinger said. “I wish that I was able to do more. There’s always something that you wish you could do better. It was a tough stretch, and just trying to keep on going and pushing through.”

The question of how Counsell’s group can close the gap in the division isn’t one that will be answered over the last nine games of the year. Of course, a better in-division record — to date the Cubs are 21-18 against NL Central opponents, while the Brewers are 30-19 — would be a good place to start.

But that’s not all. The entire organization has to figure out how to close that gap.

That means the bigger names on the roster can’t allow the team to slump as long as they did. That means they need to find internal improvements, particularly from the youngsters on the team and in the system. That means Hoyer and the rest of the front office have to make the right decisions to construct a better team on paper.

And of course, that means Counsell and his coaching staff have to find ways to put the players in the best positions to succeed.

The whole organization will spend the offseason trying to make this club better suited to contend in 2025, and then it’ll be all hands on deck to ensure the Cubs’ postseason-less streak is over a year from now.

It takes a village, huh?

“Yeah, that’s right,” Counsell said. “Takes more wins, too.”