Breaking down options for Crew's next manager

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MILWAUKEE -- Brandon Woodruff and his wife were driving home from a physical therapy session in Birmingham, Ala., when his phone started buzzing with texts from friends. Craig Counsell was leaving the Brewers, his hometown team to manage the rival Cubs, they said. Woodruff thought it was a prank.

Then his phone rang. Counsell was on the line.

“I told him, ‘I wasn’t expecting the Cubs!’” Woodruff said.

No one was expecting the Cubs. After parts of nine seasons with Counsell at the helm of the team he cheered as a boy and played for as a pro, the Brewers are in the market for a new manager. They’ve already interviewed some internal candidates, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said, and have compiled a list of external candidates for the event Counsell moved on.

“We had a really good thing. We have a really good thing,” Attanasio said. “And I’ll give Craig credit for helping to build that. … We’re going to look for a manager that can continue having a terrific clubhouse culture and can help us keep winning and get over the hump in the playoffs.”

Here are some names to know.

External candidates

Joe Espada
Dusty Baker’s bench coach in Houston is a candidate to replace the retiring legend. If the Astros go in a different direction, Espada, 48, would be a strong candidate for any job in baseball. He’s bilingual and has been coaching in the Majors or Minors since 2010.

Don Mattingly
Manager of the Dodgers from 2011-15 and the Marlins from 2016-22, Mattingly is now bench coach of the Blue Jays. He gained fortune and fame as the sweet-swinging first baseman for Attanasio’s boyhood team, the Yankees.

Clayton McCullough
The Dodgers' first-base coach, 43, managed for 10 years in the Minors for the Blue Jays before moving to the Dodgers’ system starting in 2015. He has a reputation for developing younger players and was a finalist for the Royals before they hired current skipper Matt Quatraro.

Troy Snitker
The son of Braves manager Brian Snitker has been the Astros' hitting coach since 2019. Just 34, Snitker impressed enough in his first season as Houston’s Double-A hitting coach in 2018 that the Astros promoted him to the Major League staff.

Andy Green or David Ross
Green, the former utility infielder is just 46 and has MLB managerial experience with the Padres from 2016 until he was let go in September 2019. Since then, he’s been the Cubs’ bench coach under Ross, who suddenly, stunningly, became a free agent on Monday after going 262-284 in four seasons at the helm in Chicago. What a story that would be.

Gabe Kapler
A Brewers outfielder in 2008, Kapler has managed parts of six seasons for the Phillies and Giants. San Francisco let him go near the end of the regular season. The 48-year-old Kapler is serious about fitness and meditation, and particularly attuned to the front office. He reportedly interviewed last month for Boston’s top baseball operations job.

Rodney Linares
The 46-year-old has a ton of managerial experience after beginning a coaching career in 1999 at the ripe old age of 21. During his 12 years as a skipper in Houston’s system, he managed the likes of Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, J. D. Martinez and George Springer. Linares has been on the Rays' staff since 2019, first as third-base coach and now bench coach.

Internal candidates

Pat Murphy
Attanasio made additional news Monday night when he said all of the Brewers’ coaches had signed contracts for 2024. That presumably includes their 64-year-old bench coach, who was once Counsell’s college coach at Notre Dame and is known for sometimes coaching as if he’s on a football field, not a baseball diamond. Murphy briefly managed the Padres in 2015 before answering Counsell’s call to Milwaukee.

Rickie Weeks
Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder were the headliners, but a lot of the Brewers’ toughness in the late 2000s and early 2010s, as the franchise ended its long postseason drought, came from Weeks. After a few years at home with his kids the Brewers hired him as an instructor in February 2022, and Weeks was just promoted to special assistant this week.

Victor Estevez
Any of the managers of Milwaukee’s full-season Minor League affiliates could get a look, from Rick Sweet at Triple-A Nashville to Mike Guerrero at Double-A Huntsville to Joe Ayrault at High-A Wisconsin to Estevez at Low-A Carolina. Estevez is 35, has managed five seasons in the Minors and has a bright future after leading a young Mudcats team to the franchise’s first postseason berth since 2008. He has a high-profile job this winter managing Escogido in the Dominican League.

Other internal candidates could emerge, like associate pitching, catching and strategy coach Walker McKinven, or someone from player development. General manager Matt Arnold is leading the Brewers’ search and was not available for comment amid Monday’s flurry of news.

Interestingly, Attanasio said he spoke to some Brewers players on Monday morning and asked them what they believe the Brewers have done well, and where the organization could improve as they begin to interview potential managers.

“Obviously, we've had that conversation of, ‘Would we make the postseason if Counsell wasn't managing?’” said Brewers ace Corbin Burnes. “I think that's kind of something that you might get to see this year. This is obviously the first year that we could have basically the same team with a different manager. So, quickly, you might get to see how much influence he had on us and how much he brought success to the team.”

As laid out last week, the Brewers face critical decisions this winter beyond hiring a manager, with Burnes, Woodruff and shortstop Willy Adames all going into their final arbitration years. Those players received calls from Counsell on Monday after news broke of his surprise move south.

“He said that he got the opportunity to do this because of what we did as an organization,” Burnes said. “Us developing and buying into the process and becoming good baseball players and helping the team become a good baseball team, allowed him to get to this position to make this decision. So, he was just thanking me. It's really cool to hear that the work you put in, the success that we had on the field, allowed him to have that opportunity.

“And I basically did the same thing and thanked him. You know, he was one of the most vocal guys of not giving up on me after 2019, and giving me a chance.”

Said Woodruff: “He wanted me to hear it from him. He didn’t go into great detail, which I respect, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to get in the middle of it. But he gave me brief outlines of what went down. It was a good talk. I love ‘Couns.’”