Craig Counsell gets real on roster management: “Do you want to develop players or do you want to win?”

The Chicago Cubs extended their winning streak to seven Tuesday night with a 7-4 win over the Philadelphia Phillies at Wrigley Field. In the victory, the team showcased a little of everything that has made them click recently.

More News: Chicago Cubs’ injured first-round asset dazzles in first start of season

They got some quality starting pitching in the form of Shota Imanaga’s 7-inning/1-earned run outing. They also got some solid defense, a bit of offensive pop, a shutdown end-of-game bullpen performance, and the kind of versatility that comes from having high-end roster depth.

Arguably the tipping point of the game came in the Cubs half of the fifth inning when Matt Shaw was lifted for pinch hitter Moises Ballesteros with Phillies right-hander Orion Kerkering on the mound. The bases were loaded and there were two outs in the 0-0 game.

Ballesteros fell behind 0-2 in the count, but showed grit and patience in earning a base on balls that walked in the leading run.

It wasn’t a moment that will get space on anyone’s MLB highlight reel, but it did highlight the Cubs’ roster depth and manager Craig Counsell’s willingness to switch and swap the right players for the right occasions.

Role playing at the expense of development?

More News: Chicago Cubs: Counsell bashes “bizarre” Shohei Ohtani Rule

The one question Counsell’s move generated, though, is whether players with such great potential are allowed room to develop to their full potential if they are constantly kept as role players. Shaw and Ballesteros are two of those high-end potential assets who, if all goes according to Counsell’s plans, won’t see every day playing time. Catcher Miguel Amaya is another like that, currently working as co-lead catcher with Carson Kelly. Up until this season, first baseman Michael Busch was also mostly a platoon player, benched against tough southpaw pitching.

“Do you guys want to develop players or do you want to win?” Counsell commented to reporters prior to Tuesday’s game. “Which one do you want?”

It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but a member of the press piped up with a “Both.”

“Oh, you want to do both,” Counsell answered back. “And you want it to be sunny every day and 70 degrees?”

The fact is that Counsell’s primary job is to win games. Helping young players level up and reach their full potential is always nice, but, as manager, he has to focus primarily on what helps the team succeed as a whole.

The right role for Ballesteros

In the particular case of the 22-year-old Ballesteros, who most experts see as a bit of a hitting savant, that means guiding him to the right matchups which, as of right now, happen to be against right-handed pitching.

“It’s kind of all over the game, just trying to put your players in the best places to win games,” Counsell said. “Can they improve? I think they need opportunities, certainly. But again, then we go back to the other thing. If this is what a team is about, then this is this guy’s job, this is this guy’s job. That’s why we’re a team. You know, there’s another league for that if you want to go down to that other league.”

“Every organization, you have to at some point make bets on your younger players,” Counsell said, using air quotes to emphasize the word ‘bets.’ “We felt like this was a good kind of risk or bet to take, that Moises would be able to handle this side of a platoon situation.”

So, if the Cubs are best served right now with Ballesteros as part of a platoon and Shaw as a utility asset off the bench, so be it.

At the major league level, winning comes first.

The post Craig Counsell gets real on roster management: “Do you want to develop players or do you want to win?” appeared first on ChiCitySports.

Source: https://www.chicitysports.com/chicago-cubs-craig-counsell-ballesteros-shaw-roster-management/