Three nights to sleep on the end of the second-greatest postseason run in Milwaukee Brewers history doesn't dull the pain of losing a game seven and being just five wins away from the franchise's first world championship.
Yet Brewers manager Craig Counsell remains anchored to the perspective he gave his players immediately after the game seven loss that ended their season Saturday, a 5-1 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the deciding game of the National League Championship Series.
"They took the community on an unbelievable journey. I thanked them for that...they became a true team," Counsell tells WTMJ Wisconsin's Morning News host Gene Mueller in an exclusive 1-on-1 discussion.
He says regret isn't where his mind lies about things he could have done differently, but he does still hold the pain of losing the game that could have brought his Brewers to a World Series.
"You're still a little mad. There's not a lot of regret about what happened. I'm upset that Saturday night didn't go the way we wanted. Time will give us some pretty good perspective on it, but we're still a little mad about it."
Though the Brewers lost the series, they turned many heads in the baseball world with a "Johnny Wholestaff" approach to their pitching decisions, using mainly relievers for the majority of the innings in the series, and not necessarily having defined roles for relievers by particular innings. He calls it the "outgetters" approach.
"Most people in baseball...we all don't like change. Change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. Change causes conversation and doubt," said Counsell.
"We had to proceed in a way that we thought was best to win baseball games. That's my job. That's our job. We'll have to continue to do that. Our organization has to look at change as 'We have to seek it out...how can we be different?' It's an absolute mandate for what we do. We'll continue to do it. People will continue to struggle with it, but it's part of who we are."
He also explained that the impetus for using the unorthodox bullpen strategy came not from a specific plan that came to him, but the realization of a rare talent in the pen that could allow him to use such strategies.
"A lot of this for us, you could go back to last year and really Josh Hader, when he came up, for me stimulated 'Wow, we could really do things differently with a player like this...with his set of skills.' That's organic. A player sparked all these ideas for us and for me. That's a lot of times how it works. Players will come around. People will be around. That's how we spark those ideas."
Surely, ideas will be sparked this offseason which Counsell plans to spend with his family in Whitefish Bay, sans a couple opportunities for travel.
"The dad role gets a little bigger in the offseason. We've got a couple trips planned. The thing we all said walking out the door is that we've shaved four weeks off of our calendar (due to playing in the postseason). That's going to speed up (offseason preparations). We'll be back to work sooner than we know it in a beautiful new complex in Maryvale come February."
Listen to the full conversation above in your Soundcloud player, including Counsell's message to the fans who supported his Brewers this season.
