Sometimes, it's just not that complicated

The Cubs roster has flaws, but the new guy seems to know how to handle them

Sometimes, it's just not that complicated

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Last November 6 the Cubs shocked everybody by firing their owner’s pet of a manager and replacing him with former Brewers manager Craig Counsell. Nobody was more surprised than David Ross, but to be fair, that dunce is surprised by the sun rising and setting every day.

When the move was made it was apparent that Jed Hoyer, Cubs president of ‘whatever it takes to win 84 games’ decided that the only way Ross could provide his team with any kind of discernible in-game advantage would only come if MLB instituted some sort of in-game lineup card eating challenge.

The improvement from Ross to Counsell is incredibly difficult to calculate. I mean you have to go all the way back to 2019 to find a Cubs’ manager who was this much better at the job than Ross.

Wait. That’s not that long is it? Just one manager.

Anyway, when the move was made we allowed ourselves to dream that it was a signal that the Cubs were going for it. After all, we all pontificated that you don’t pay your manager $8 million a year if you’re not in win at all costs mode. But then we all joked that maybe what the Cubs were really doing was hiring a guy who excelled with a team that assembles rosters on the cheap so they could do the same thing.

And then we laughed, and laughed, and laughed.