The Chicago Cubs are set to make their first addition to manager Craig Counsell‘s staff this winter.
They’re planning to hire Quintin Berry to be their new third-base coach, sources confirmed to CHGO on Thursday.
Berry’s hiring, which was first reported by The Athletic, has not yet been made official by the team, but it comes after the Cubs let go of a few coaches in the first month of their offseason. He was the Milwaukee Brewers‘ first-base coach for the last four seasons, including Counsell’s final three years managing Milwaukee before he took the job in Chicago prior to the 2024 season. Berry previously served as the Brewers’ minor league outfield and baserunning coordinator in 2019 and 2020
As a player, Berry, 39, appeared with five separate teams in five separate seasons during the 2010s (including the Cubs in 2015), and his baserunning acumen stood out — he stole 29 bases in 31 attempts over 132 regular season games at the big league level.
He brought that expertise to Milwaukee, where he worked with Brewers baserunners along with his first-base duties. Berry has been credited for his influence on Milwaukee’s baserunning efforts. the From 2021-24, the Brewers stole the third-most bases in baseball (524) and rated No. 3 in FanGraphs’ baserunning runs above average metric (30.3). In 2024, Milwaukee finished with the second-most steals (217) and the top baserunning runs above average rating (19.7).
Having been hired almost a year ago in a pretty quick process, Counsell wanted to build his coaching staff for 2024 with a slower and more deliberate approach. His move to Chicago came fairly late, which didn’t leave a lot of time for him to make a bunch of changes, and he ultimately kept most of former manager David Ross‘ staff intact. But as Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer noted at his end-of-season press conference, “Part of hiring a manager like him is giving him the ability to build his staff.”
Now with nearly a full year in the organization under his belt, Counsell is set to bring on a familiar face, both to him and to the Cubs.
Berry will replace former third-base coach Willie Harris on Counsell’s staff. Harris (the team’s third-base coach from 2021-24) and the Cubs agreed to part ways earlier this month. Along with Harris, the Cubs let go of first-base coach Mike Napoli, another role player in the Cubs’ baserunning department. Hiring Berry helps fill the void with someone Counsell got to know in his previous organization.
The Cubs also parted ways with bullpen coach Darren Holmes, assistant hitting coach Jim Adduci and strength and conditioning coaches Keegan Knoll and Ryan Clausen this offseason.
“I think it’s his right to want his own staff,” Hoyer said. “He should want his own staff, and I think it would’ve been almost unusual if, at the end of the year, he just chose to keep everyone together. With our help, certainly, we’ll all be working on what that looks like, but I think that it was probably expected that there’d be some changes to the staff after his first year.”
