The Cubs didn’t fire David Ross and make Craig Counsell the highest-paid manager in MLB history just so they could save on player payroll by morphing into the Brewers. No, Jed Hoyer pulled off the shocking coup because he knew things had grown stagnant at the corner of Clark and Addison, and that Counsell was the right person to shake everything up. As Ken Rosenthal wrote for The Athletic, the goal was for the new manager to challenge the status quo.
“This is gonna be uncomfortable,” Hoyer told the front office and coaching staff.