What Happens If It Turns Out the Cubs Paid Top Dollar for a Manager in Decline?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Absolutely no one thinks about managerial aging curves in MLB. The very notion of one seems almost nonsensical. The thing is, it might be a thing--and that might mean trouble for the Chicago Cubs.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

Like player aging curves, naturally, managerial aging curves are imperfect descriptions of individual performance. There are guys who peak early and guys who bloom late, on the field and on the top step of the dugout. In general, though, great managers were and are younger than you might realize. There's a plasticity to your thinking and a willingness to change around age 40 that dissipates as you enter and travel through your 50s. It's also much easier to relate to players (most of whom are between 22 and 32) when you're roughly 42 than when you're 52, and easier then than when you're 62.

Craig Counsell will turn 54 this August. He has a youthful look that is only possible, at this age, in 2024, but that's his age. That's notable, because:

• Sparky Anderson took over the Cincinnati Reds at age 36. He had his last 90-win season, with the Detroit Tigers, at age 53, in 1987. 
• Earl Weaver took over the Baltimore Orioles at age 37. He retired after the 1982 season, at 51. He made a brief return later in the decade, but without success.
• Counsell is entering an age range in which managers tend to struggle, in the middle of their 50s. The best and most successful managers (other than Counsell himself) of the last two decades--A.J. Hinch, Alex Cora, Dave Roberts, Brian Snitker, Terry Francona, Bruce Bochy, and Dusty Baker--all are either younger than Counsell or considerably older.

Again, aging curves don't even apply smoothly to players, for whom physical changes during one's peak seasons have huge and obvious ramifications. At the moment, it looks like anyone who bet against Aaron Judge aging well after his historic 2022 season just because he was already past 30 were wrong to do so. Justin Verlander is still going strong in his 40s. Even more plainly, manager aging curves are going to be noisy, especially because we live in an era of better physical health and more continual intergenerational interaction than those of, for instance, Anderson and Weaver.

The Cubs found their World Series-winning manager when he was already past 60. The last three World Series-winning skippers have been 65, 73, and 68 years old, respectively. However, when a manager who has had success in the past begins running into more adversity with teams as he enters his mid-50s, we have to pay some extra attention to it--just as we would if an All-Star shortstop's production cratered just as they hit 30. It's possible that both parties recover, and that their difficult stretch proves to be just that, but it's harder to dismiss as inconsequential at 30 (for a player) or 53 (for a manager) than at 25 or 40, respectively.

That makes this a very uncomfortable moment for the Cubs. While he had a tricky gauntlet to run and still managed (no pun intended) to pull out an NL Central title in 2023, that final season in Milwaukee was arguably his worst at the helm of the Brewers--not in terms of achievement, but in the way he handled the clubhouse and pulled levers within games. That was the season after he had failed to hold the team together in the wake of the Brewers trading Josh Hader in uly 2022.

At the time, I was inclined to write off those issues as the result of an uncomfortable relationship between ownership, the front office, and the field staff, largely beyond his control. David Stearns left the Brewers to run the New York Mets at the end of last season, but before that, he'd stepped back into semi-resignation, after the team prevented him from making that very move to New York a year sooner. It was an awkward situation, especially in the shadow of the Hader trade, and the contentiousness that arose between the team and ace Corbin Burnes last spring exacerbated things--again, in a way not within Counsell's influence.

Now, however, there's more to consider. As was true last year in Milwaukee, Counsell has been given a deeply imperfect roster and asked to turn it into a playoff team in Chicago--but this time, we can assume that he had as much influence over the construction of that roster as any manager in baseball. The ink on his record-setting contract is barely dry. He was vocal all winter about the way he expected things to work. He was in a position to succeed.

Yet, two months in, Counsell is failing--outright, this time, instead of on some vague level rooted in very high expectations. The Cubs are below .500, and they've lost 14 of their last 19. Not since late 2015, after the Brewers had fallen far out of the race, has a Counsell-led team gone 5-14 over any stretch of 19 games. His trademark was the exceptionally strong finish, which he effected in 2018, 2019, and 2023 in breathtaking ways, but the secret ingredient to that success was an exceptional ability to avert long stretches of lousy play early. Counsell's teams would enter September within striking distance and then get hot, and the rest became history. Again, though, none of those teams ever lost 14 of 19.

On Friday, Counsell used Patrick Wisdom (defensibly) as a pinch-hitter for Mike Tauchman, against a left-handed Reds reliever. At the end of the game, though, he then used Nick Madrigal as a pinch-hitter for Wisdom, with the tying run at first base and the winning one in the batter's box. He justified that choice after the game by noting that Wisdom faced a bad matchup in Reds closer Alexis Díaz. That's not untrue; it's just irrelevant. Madrigal also faced a bad matchup in Díaz, in that Díaz is an MLB-caliber right-handed pitcher.

Wisdom could, by some happy accident, have run into a walkoff home run. The most likely outcome was a strikeout, but that would have been just fine. It would have brought Seiya Suzuki to the plate with Michael Busch still anchored at first as the tying run. If Suzuki had hit the same line drive into the corner that he hit when he actually came to the plate, Busch might very well have scored.

Madrigal, of course, didn't score. He didn't come especially close to doing so, because he's a much worse and slower baserunner than Busch is. That Madrigal even got the privilege of being thrown out on that would-be huge hit, though, is a product mostly of good luck and bad Reds defense. Had they not flubbed a potential double play, Suzuki would have been up representing the tying run, with two outs, instead of as the winning one. Madrigal nearly grounded into a double play, which felt about as likely as a Wisdom strikeout, and his chances of coming up with a hit against Díaz were virtually nil.

Putting Madrigal in for Wisdom there was a shockingly bad managerial decision--the kind we might have expected from David Ross, on occasion, but that Counsell was supposed to avoid assiduously. It's emblematic of a much bigger problem, too, which is that the manager doesn't seem to have figured out how to use this roster at all. He might still be an upgrade on Ross, but he might also be a skipper in decline. Worse, we can't even categorize this as "early" decline, exactly.

Managers run into ruts around this stage of their careers, unless they're all-time greats and/or are equipped with excellent talent. The Cubs gambled on the idea that Counsell is an all-time great, with the deal to which they signed him, and they might yet turn out to be correct. They certainly didn't equip him with elite talent, though, and that might result in a setback they can't afford.

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[Bertz]

Maybe a better explanation is that it's time for folks to have some introspection about their view of the magnitude of difference between different managers.

[PackLandVA]

Hitters gotta hit. Defensive has to make the plays they're expected to make. To many TOOTBLANs.

Not sure Counsell's responsible for any of those.

[Guest234]

This is a hot take like touching dry ice!