Good For Craig Counsell, MLB Managers Deserve To Be Paid

Photo by Heather Maguire on Unsplash

Monday morning brought the surprising news that the Cubs had hired Craig Counsell as their manager. Surprising because it wasn’t publicly known that the Cubs were looking for a new manager, perhaps because the Cubs didn’t know they were looking for a new manager. David Ross had been the Cubs manager since the 2020 season and was under contract through the end of the 2024 season.

As Sahadev Sharma at The Athletic reported, Cubs President Jed Hoyer admired Counsell and thought he was the best manager in baseball. But Hoyer also thought that another team would snap Counsell up before November 1, when Counsell’s contract with the Brewers expired.

The Mets had already fired Buck Showalter, so they had asked for and received permission from the Brewers to talk to Counsell before November 1. Same with the Guardians, after Terry Francona retired at the end of the season.

When Counsell remained unsigned on November 1, Hoyer jumped at the chance. Now Counsell has a 5-year/$40 million contract to manage the Cubs.

The $8 million average yearly salary makes the Counsell the highest-paid manager in Major League Baseball. That was Counsell’s goal—or at least one of them. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Counsell “was motivated by resetting the market for managers, particularly those in smaller markets.”

Chicago is not a small market, so it remains to be seen how much of a cascading effect Counsell’s contract will have in places like Milwaukee, where Counsell was the skipper for nine seasons.

I hope Counsell’s contract does reset the market for managers in every MLB city.

As a whole, MLB manager salaries comprise a tiny slice of what teams spend on players. Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that six MLB managers earned less than $1 million in 2023. By comparison, the minimum MLB salary for a first-year player in 2023 was $720,000. Is an MLB manager worth slightly more than a rookie?

According to Nightengale, half of all MLB managers earned $1.75 million or less in the 2023 season. Fifty-nine major league relief pitchers had salaries higher than that in 2023. 59!

That scale seems out of whack, given the breadth of a manager’s job—leading 26 players on and off the field, serving as the go-to between the front office and the players, setting the lineup for 162 games, creating a pre-game strategy, adjusting the strategy as each game progresses, and talking to the media before and after every game. And that probably undersells a manager’s responsibility and the pressure he’s under.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for higher player salaries, particularly for younger players who often produce more on the field before they hit the free agent market than after. The MLBPA—the players’ union—negotiated hard in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement to raise the salary floor for players under team control.

Managers don’t have a union because they are, well, managers. Counsell, who was an active player representative to the union during his playing days, wanted to do for managers what the union has done for players.

Good.

I hope Counsell leveraged the fact that, on average, NBA and NFL head coaches earn much more than an MLB manager, despite the longer and more action-packed MLB season.

For the 2023-2024 season, the average NBA coach will earn $3.5 million. The Detroit Pistons’ new coach, Monty Williams, will earn more than $13 million each year for six years. Williams, like Counsell, consistently coached his former team, the Phoenix Suns, to the playoffs but never won a championship. After the Suns fired Williams, the Pistons swooped in with a huge new deal.

Why shouldn’t Counsell be similarly rewarded?

The average NFL coach will earn $6.6 million this season. The salary of the lowest-paid NFL coach—Kevin Stefanski of the Cleveland Browns—is $3.5 million. That’s what the Brewers paid Counsell last season.

I know what many are thinking. Managers don’t sell tickets. Managers don’t sell jerseys. Managers don’t win games, players do. That’s what you think until you watch what Bruce Bochy did with the Texas Rangers this season. Or you watch the manager of your favorite team overuse a reliever or under utilize a bench player or make a strategic blunder that cost your team a game.

One game was the difference between the Arizona Diamondbacks getting into the postseason as a Wild Card team and the Chicago Cubs going home on October 1. Kudos to the Cubs for getting a manager that maximizes his roster and consistently makes smart strategic in-game moves. And kudos to Counsell for setting a new salary standard.