MLB Manager Hot Seat: Counsell's Cubs Are 12-18 and September Is Doing the Talking

The MLB manager hot seat file landed this morning and it carries two names that would have sounded like a typo in April: Craig Counsell in Chicago and Ron Washington in Anaheim. Neither man has been told anything. Both fanbases have stopped pretending they're fine. That's September for you, the month when the standings quit moving and the conversation moves to the dugout instead.

This is the part of the calendar I love and dread in equal measure. Pennant races are pure. Job watches are not. But they're both baseball, and the second one tells you as much about how a franchise actually thinks as any trade deadline ever will.

Why is Craig Counsell on the MLB manager hot seat?

The number doing the work here is a simple one. Eight of the last ten managers fired mid-season had losing records over the previous 30 games. Counsell's Cubs are 12-18 in their last 30. You don't need a model for that. You need a calendar and a nervous owner.

What makes it strange is the résumé attached. Counsell crossed over from Milwaukee on the richest contract ever handed to a manager, and he did it while the Brewers kept winning without him, which is the single most inconvenient fact in his file. A manager who leaves and gets outperformed by his old clubhouse is carrying a weight no in-game decision can lift. Fair? Not especially. Managers don't throw the pitches. But this is the job, and Counsell knew the terms when he signed them.

The Cubs are in Cincinnati tonight, first pitch 6:41 ET, and the tenor around the team is the tenor of a club that stopped playing crisp baseball a month ago. A 12-18 stretch in August and September looks different than the same 12-18 in May. Same math, different room.

Ron Washington, the Angels, and a restless building

Washington's situation reads differently to me, and I want to be honest about why. He took a job that has broken better-resourced men, inherited a roster that has been treading water for the better part of a decade, and got tagged with underperformance for it. The reporting has the Angels fanbase restless. It has been restless since before he got there.

There's also noise on the ownership side in Anaheim that I don't have the full picture on yet, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What I can say is that when a front office is unsettled, the manager is the cheapest thing in the building to change. Always has been. The Twins are in Anaheim tonight at 9:39 ET, which is exactly the kind of late-September game nobody outside the two clubhouses will remember and everybody inside them will feel.

The warm seats, per the same breakdown: Bob Melvin with the Giants, who are living on the playoff bubble, and Mike Shildt in San Diego, where the word is ownership's patience is thinning. Melvin's case gets decided on the field. The Giants are at Dodger Stadium tonight at 10:15 ET, and a bubble team playing a division series in September is the most honest job interview there is.

Bo Bichette's $37 million decision

Here's the one that will follow us into November. Bichette has a $37 million player option, and quick polls of executives and agents came back roughly six to four against him picking it up. That surprised me at first read. Then I looked at the shape of the thing.

So the trade is real money now against real years later. Opt in and he takes the biggest single-season check available to him. Opt out and he's asking a soft shortstop market to hand a 30-year-old with a .310 on-base a nine-figure guarantee, and eats a $17 million annual pay cut to get the security. Neither answer is obviously right, which is exactly why the executives split instead of shrugging.

My read as a fan of roster building: the .420 slug is the number that decides it. If Bichette closes this season hitting the ball the way he did in his best Toronto summers, the four-year deal gets written. If he limps in at .258, he takes the $37 million and runs it back. The Mets had hoped this was simpler than it is.

Why did the Nationals extend Cade Cavalli?

Washington finally did the thing Washington has not done in years: it kept somebody before it had to. Cavalli, 25, a righty with a 4.20 ERA across 18 starts, is finalizing an extension. Terms aren't public. The insider framing has it near five years and $75 million with a club option for a sixth.

The case for is in the peripherals. A 9.8 K/9 with 3.1 walks per nine is a mid-rotation starter's profile with room on top. The case against is the 5.10 FIP he posted last season, which says the run prevention was doing some borrowing from the defense behind him. Both things are true at once, and that's the entire art of the extension: you're paying for the version of the pitcher that hasn't shown up yet.

went to the almanac on this one, and the lesson is old. Teams that pay their own young arms early, before the arbitration clock does the pricing, generally look smart three winters later. Teams that wait for certainty pay $20 million a year for whoever's left. The Nationals chose the first door. About time.

Steve Cohen, Pete Alonso, and the 300th

The best thing on the wire this morning had no analysis attached to it at all. Alonso hit his 300th home run, the Mets owner clapped like a guy in section 128, and then said it out loud: "It was his 300th. I gotta give him props." Alonso grinned and tipped the cap.

Three hundred homers is a real milestone in a franchise that has not had many great sluggers, and the reaction was the right size. No press release. No spin. A billionaire behaving like a fan for ten seconds. That's a tell about how a clubhouse actually feels, and it's worth more than most things said into a microphone in September.

David Cone's check engine light for pitchers

Cone floated a front office idea this week that the Mets should frankly steal from him. The details sit behind a paywall, but the concept is clean: use advanced biomechanics to flag pitcher injuries before the arm announces them, a check engine light for elbows. The reporting says the Dodgers and Rays are already testing versions of it.

That's the whole gap between the two ends of this sport right now. One group is measuring the motion that precedes the tear. Another is waiting for the MRI. I don't know if the biomechanics work catches half of these arms or a tenth of them. I know which clubhouse I'd rather pitch in.

What to watch next

Howie Rose is hanging up the headset, and the tribute piece that ran on him this week is really a piece about a booth the size of a broom closet and a man who filled it for decades. The Mets runs in 1986 and 2000, the 2015 NLDS walk-off, and every gut punch in between, all of it delivered by the same voice, all of it ending with "Put it in the books!" Voices like that are the connective tissue of a franchise. You don't get another one.

The other thing I'm watching is Jared Young. The Mets infielder took a frightening shot to the head, the CT came back clean, and he has feeling in all four limbs. He's still dealing with concussion symptoms and the doctors are running more tests. His manager put it plainly: it feels like the scariest outcomes were avoided. That's the only scoreboard that matters this week.

On the field, Philadelphia is at Citi Field tonight at 7:16 ET, a night after Bryce Harper called it postseason baseball already and said the Phillies are chasing the top Wild Card slot. Those are the games that decide whether anybody ends up changing a manager at all. Win in late September and the hot seat cools in a hurry. Lose, and October arrives with a list of names on it.