Whoever Suits Up for the 2025 Chicago Cubs, the Coaches Have to Make Them Better

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Chicago Bears hired Ben Johnson as their new head coach Monday afternoon. It's a good reminder to Cubs fans that they also have a much-prized leader in their dugout, and that the team's ceiling might be set in part by a reshaped coaching staff, in addition to their raw talent.

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

It's not apples-to-apples, of course. Neither a manager nor a hitting coach nor a pitching coach can have as great a direct and easily traceable impact on a team's efficacy in baseball as can a head coach or coordinator in football. When the Cubs hired Craig Counsell 14 months ago, though, their hope was that he would engender better performances from his players than David Ross had from his, and that the team could pair continued increases in talent with improvements that go a bit beyond baseline talent level.

Even when a manager and coaching staff have such an impact, it's harder to see in baseball than in football, and it's hard to say whether Counsell and his slapdash group did so in 2024. They rebuilt a portion of that staff this winter, though, and it's fairly clear that they believe the changes are for the better. While they've also augmented the roster and will continue to do so, they want to see players outperform their projections, too, and some of that depends on great coaches. Hence the investment they've made, not only in Counsell, but in new faces Quintin Berry, Jose Javier, and last year's top adds, Ryan Flaherty and Mark Strittmatter. They promoted Casey Jacobson from the player-development group to join that field staff, but have backfilled there by hiring Tyler Zombro, and they've also added key voices Matt Talarico and Jerry Weinstein to the front office as player development specialists.

The common thread—with Berry, Javier, Talarico, and Weinstein, especially—is not a relationship with Counsell, but an emphasis on excellent execution of the little things. These hires reflect a new dedication to being better at positioning defenders, especially in the outfield; running the bases, especially taking advantage of the rules changes that happened in 2023; and pitch framing. Meanwhile, replacing the departed Daniel Moskos with Jacobson as the lieutenant to Tommy Hottovy is designed to ensure that the team continues to get a bit more out of seemingly low-ceiling pitchers than the numbers forecast.

Is any of this an excuse not to spend money, or for the Cubs not to further improve their roster via trades or free agency in the next month? By no means. Because the Ricketts family sets too tight a budget for the front office to bring in sufficient talent to dominate the division or threaten the Mets or Dodgers, though, they do need to be more than the sum of their parts—or at least, more than the apparent sum based on uncertain evaluations of each individual part. That's an important thing to keep in mind in the weeks ahead.

We know that the team hired Javier and Talarico to port the Yankees' innovations in base-stealing to a younger, faster club, and that tells us that if they can get Pete Crow-Armstrong on base a bit more, they're going to ask him to steal more than 50 bases. Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya were last year's most obvious wins for the trio of hitting coaches (Dustin Kelly, Juan Cabreja, and John Mallee), but not the only ones, and that group will also be tasked with smoothing out the transition for Matt Shaw as he joins the big-league team. Amaya and Carson Kelly will be expected to improve and excel defensively, not only because Kelly has a reputation as a strong defender anyway, but because Strittmatter and Weinstein are in the fold specifically to upgrade their infrastructure in that department. Counsell, Hottovy and Jacobson will be asked to sift quickly through a ton of options for their pitching staff this spring, and then to position high-upside hurlers like Ben Brown and Nate Pearson to have the greatest possible impact.

The Brewers have beaten the Cubs out for two straight division titles, and have been the most successful team in the NL Central over the last seven years. Most of that was under Counsell, and none of it was because they had the most raw talent in the division. On the contrary, Milwaukee dominated partially through superb coaching. Their hitting department is underrated. Pitching coach Chris Hook has enjoyed a good tenure with trusted lieutenants, just like Hottovy, and his staffs have overachieved. They were, arguably, the best team in baseball at teaching pitch framing and at positioning defenders over the last several campaigns. The Cubs needed to close that gap, just as they needed to close the one between the two teams in talent in 2021 and 2022. By hiring Counsell away and bolstering his staff this winter, they've done much of that work. We'll see whether that shows up on the field in 2025, but it will be harder to judge it than it will be to tell whether the front office gave them good enough players to work with in the first place.

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[Development DL]

Love this part of the game . I did not know d positioning was such a Brewer strength . 

Mr Trueblood , how many wins can be added ,through these coaching and development additions . , ( d positioning , base running runs , catcher framing ) .