SEEKING COUNSELL

In what has been a somewhat disappointing offseason, the Brewers finally made the news with a three-year contract extension to Manager Craig Counsell. The 49-year-old Whitefish Bay native son came into this offseason with one year left on the three-year extension given to him in 2017. This came as a surprise to absolutely no one. Craig (I feel like he'd be fine with me calling him Craig) has shown he has exactly what it takes to lead a small market team. He is crafty, willing to try every trick in the book to get the win. He gets ejected from games when he wants to spark the guys. He knows when to bet on a reliever for another batter, and he also knows when his guy needs to come out. Now importantly, this season the MLB decided that the Brewers aren't allowed to be good because it's bad for business. In these most recent winter meetings, the MLB voted in a new rule saying that relief pitchers must face at least three batters unless the side is retired or injury occurs. Craig is a big fan of one batter pitchers, and all you have to do is look at Alex Claudio's 2019 stats. With 83 games pitched in, Claudio only had 62 innings pitched. The year before with the Texas Rangers, Claudio had 68 innings pitched in 66 games. With Claudio resigned for this year, it will be interesting to see how Counsell tries to weasel his way around the rule change to keep to his strategy as much as he can. After getting to the playoffs back to back for the first time since 1981-1982, I fully trust Craig to go for three in a row for the first time ever. In my opinion, he should get a lifetime contract, words cannot describe how much I love this man. After taking over for Ron Roenicke early in the 2015 season, he went on to go 61-76 (after Ron went 7-18 to start), and then 73-89, then took a mediocre Brewers team to one game shy of the Wild Card with an 86-76 record. He then took a good Brewers team to a 96-67 record and the NLCS. This was followed by taking a Yelichless team that was 6 1/2 games back in the last month to the Wild Card game, that they should have won. All in all, expect good things these next three years and also expect his Milwaukee career to continue for much longer. 3 MORE YEARS, 3 MORE YEARS, 3 MORE YEARS.