Brewers will not concede to Cubs
On the afternoon of July 14, before the first game of baseball’s second half, Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell gathered his team for an impromptu reopening day speech.
At the time, the first-place Brewers held a 5½-game lead over the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Central Division. Counsell looked around the clubhouse and said: “This isn’t going to be easy. You always hope it will be, but it never is.”
Within 10 days, the Brewers’ lead was completely gone.
Counsell had not been aiming to appear so prescient when he gave his short speech, but the Brewers’ reality is this: with about two months to go, entering Wednesday they held a slim lead of a halfgame over the surging Cubs, who outpace them in experience, star power, pedigree, payroll and recent World Series titles.
“We’ve talked about this: there’s a lot of season left,” Counsell said. “People want to start making grand, sweeping statements already, but there are a lot of games left. We’ve had some tough losses, a lot of late losses, but one of the strengths of this team is its resiliency.”
The Brewers made a trade to shore up their leaky bullpen, sending outfield prospect Ryan Cordell to the Chicago White Sox for right-handed reliever Anthony Swarzak, who is likely to slot into the top setup role for all-star closer Corey Knebel.
But any major acquisition has to be weighed against the Brewers’ future hopes. Four months ago, no one expected this to be a go-for-it season in Milwaukee. Counsell, the sage old skipper of 46, is preaching self-reliance: that the Brewers’ solutions are already in their clubhouse.
Everybody suspected the Cubs would beef up their roster with a big trade and catch fire. Both happened after the break, with the Cubs’ trade for lefty Jose Quintana and the stretch of nine wins in 11 games to open the second half.
If the mission of holding off the Cubs was destined to be difficult, as Counsell predicted, it was in keeping with the Brewers’ composition. With a few exceptions, they are a collection of castoffs, self-made successes and reclamation projects.
Their Opening Day payroll of US$63 million was the lowest in the majors. Some nights, they start a pair of waiver-claim pickups, Hernan Perez and Jesus Aguilar, in the middle of their lineup. Former Toronto Blue Jay Eric Thames, a breakout star in the first half, was signed following a three-year stint in Korea.
“That’s part of our story,” Counsell said. “It hasn’t been easy for any of these guys in how they got here. It’s a group of guys coming from different places, some of them passed off, frankly, by their organizations. Most of them haven’t gotten here through an easy road, so I don’t think they were ever expecting this to be easy.”