It wasn’t up to Christian Yelich, but he certainly had thoughts when he found out in November that Brewers manager Craig Counsell was moving north to Chicago.
Keep the manager’s job in house.
Give Pat Murphy, the Padres’ interim manager in 2015, a chance to be a full-time skipper.
“He got my vote, honestly,” the 2018 NL MVP said Thursday afternoon. “That was my preference once ‘Counse’ left, for Murphy to be the guy. Whether that was what was going to happen was out of my hands, but that’s what made sense. … Let’s keep what we’ve got going the same. The day-to-day is the same. Spring training is the same. The identity of the team is the same and he knows what we’re about and what we do.
“Why would you want to change that?”
Especially after the last few years.
With Murphy as bench coach, the Brewers had won three National League Central titles in the last six years and had made the postseason five times, beginning with pushing the Dodgers to Game 7 in the 2018 NLCS.
All the while, Milwaukee’s payroll never ranked higher than 19th in the majors.
Fast forward seven months later.
The Brewers are again comfortably in first place in the NL Central despite …
• Counsell leaving for the Cubs;
• The club’s trades of ace Corbin Burnes and the reliable Adrian Houser to make sure payroll stays within market constraints;
• The addition of a 10th starting pitcher to the MIA list when former Padres prospect Robert Gasser opted for Tommy John surgery.
“I think we’re kind of written off as probably supposed to be a bad team,” Yelich said as the Brewers lined up against the Padres this weekend. “We were an afterthought to basically everybody except for those of us in this room. There’s obviously a long way to go and we’re far from really accomplishing anything but I think I think we played pretty hard as a group and overcome a lot of adversity and health stuff with effort honestly and finding a way. It’s not pretty every night. There’s gonna be rough stretches during the season. That’s just baseball.
“But I think we do a really good job of competing and playing really hard. And that obviously starts with Murph.”
Yelich was speaking as he sat at his locker in the corner of the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park on Thursday afternoon.
Sitting in the visiting manager’s office, Murphy offered his take on the Brewers’ culture.
“I don’t know what’s helping us win games,” Murphy said. “I know the on-the-field stuff that’s helping us win games, and I know it’s about people. This game is always be about people. It’s played by people. It’s about people. And we’ve got a group of people that like to compete. They like to stick up for themselves. They like to fight. They like to be in the trenches together. And that’s what I love about the team. So I’m enjoying it.
“I don’t know what we’ve accomplished or what we haven’t because I’m not looking up. Just got my head down.”
It’s how he got this seat in the first place as a college baseball icon who found refuge in the Padres’ organization upon resigning amid an investigation into academic fraud, recruiting violations and improper use of facilities at Arizona State.
The Padres hired Murphy in 2010, first as a baseball operations assistant in the Padres’ front office.
Then he climbed the managerial ladder, starting in short-season Eugene (Ore.) in 2011 and climbing as high as the Padres’ Triple-A affiliates in Tucson (2013) and later El Paso (2014-15).
By the time General Manager A.J. Preller tapped him as the interim manager for the fired Bud Black in June 2015, Murphy had acquitted himself as a favorite among Padres farmhands.
One problem.
The big-league core — Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and James Shields, among other — did not know Murphy.
Another: He was joining a staff that was fiercely loyal to Black and included two future managers in Dave Roberts and Mark Kotsay.
“I didn’t know the major league game, and the staff I had around me were guys that all wanted to the job or had a great relationship with Buddy, as I did,” Murphy recalled of his 42-54 stint as the Padres’ interim manager. “I had a great relationship with Buddy. I still do. … Dave Roberts, I have a friend for life because of it. I met some great people. Nobody did anything wrong to me. (The Padres) gave me a great opportunity … but it was a difficult memory.
“I probably wasn’t ready for it.”
Mostly because the Padres simply didn’t win like he was used to winning.
Also, he found it difficult to be the Pat Murphy that earned the opportunity in the first place.
“It was very difficult … but that’s on me,” Murphy said. “That’s not on them. Yeah, nobody’s fault except my own. But that is something I’d love to help somebody else go through it someday and realize they can be themselves. That’s why being with Counsell for eight years as the bench coach, really that San Diego experience helped me really understand how to be good to the manager and how to help the manager if you can.”
A reunion with Counsell was easy to forecast.
The Brewers had balked at allowing Counsell, who played for Murphy at Notre Dame, to bring him to Milwaukee when he was hired that May to replace Ron Roenicke. When Murphy was let go by Preller at the end of a 74-88 season, he quickly reconnected with Counsell in Milwaukee and began folding into a new organization.
Before long, the things that endeared Murphy to Padres minor leaguers surfaced in the Brewers’ clubhouse.
The desire to win.
The lack of BS.
And a sense of humor, to boot. (Who doesn’t remember the part Murphy played in all those Cody Decker YouTube videos?).
“He shoots you straight,” Yelich said. “You don’t have to wonder how he feels about you. Keeps it loose, but he’s intense at the same time. And yeah, I think he knows players really well.”
Said Colin Rea, who pitched for Murphy both in Eugene and in San Diego as a rookie in 2015 and has entrenched himself in his rotation in Milwaukee: “Guys love to play for him. It’s kind of tough love, but that’s what we want as players. Just tell us like it is.”
Rea remembers a sit-down as a rookie in 2015. Murphy had already been on the job for about a month when the Padres called up Rea that August for his debut.
It wasn’t going poorly, but he’d hit a rough patch when Murphy pulled him into his office.
It started along the lines of, “you’ve got to figure it out.”
Get back on the attack.
You’ve got to compete at a higher level.
Believe in yourself.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Rea said. “I was like four or five starts in. I didn’t know what was going on (as a major leaguer) and he finds a way to turn it super positive.”
It wasn’t all that different than the sit-downs the two had when Murphy was managing Rea in Eugene.
In fact, he still isn’t all that different, by Rea’s view, now that he’s settled back into a big-league manager’s job.
Murphy knows that’s far from the case.
“I hope I’ve gotten better every single year, and — I always say this: We’re all under construction,” Murphy said. “I’m still under construction. But yeah, like anyone else I’ve grown as a coach. I hope to keep doing that.”