CHICAGO — Craig Counsell’s stump speech is well known to the media and anyone who has tuned into his news conferences on TV.
Forget everything you’ve known about baseball since you were born, the Chicago Cubs manager lectures, and get it into your mind that all pitchers are simply out-getters, no matter their titles.
“Roles are out the window, so get your head off of roles, is what I would say,” Counsell said on the final weekend of the regular season. “Those words are irrelevant.”
Counsell practices what he preaches, and he put his “OGs” to the test Tuesday in the Cubs’ 3-1 win over the San Diego Padres in Game 1 of the National League wild-card series at Wrigley Field.
Starter Matthew Boyd was needed for only 13 outs. Closer Daniel Palencia came in for five outs in the fifth and sixth, and set-up men Drew Pomeranz, Andrew Kittredge and Brad Keller contributed three outs apiece as the Cubs shut down the Padres on one run and four hits.
“We’ve been doing that all year,” catcher Carson Kelly said. “Next guy up, next guy gives it to the next guy. All in all, a really good day for us.”
It’s easy to tell a staff to sublimate their egos, but getting them to buy in is another matter, especially when stats like saves and holds can lead to higher salaries.
“In the postseason, it’s all-hands-on-deck and you are truly trying to win every inning,” Kittredge said. “I don’t think our bullpen has an ego. That’s kind of the cool thing about it. Everyone is willing to take the ball whenever, and that’s the kind of mindset you have to have playing team baseball in the postseason.”
Shortly after Counsell finished his news conference without mentioning a Game 2 starter, the Cubs announced Kittredge would get the honor. Speculation was that left-hander Shota Imanaga would come in after Kittredge handled the Padres’ lethal right-handed hitters, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, in the first inning.
But, as usual, that’s the Cubs’ business and Counsell doesn’t feel the need to let the opposition know what he’s up to.
It doesn’t really matter, Keller said, with the relievers all being chameleons.
“That’s kind of our MO,” Keller said. “Whatever role we get asked to throw in, we just try to get a zero and pass it on to the next guy.”
Boyd was removed in the fifth inning after only 58 pitches with the Cubs trailing 1-0 and a runner on first with one out. Palencia then retired Tatis and Luis Arraez to get out of the inning in his postseason debut.
The ballpark was relatively quiet with the Cubs offense on mute. Wrigley was in dire need of some mood enhancement when Seiya Suzuki homered off Nick Pivetta to lead off the fifth.
“Electric,” Kelly said. “Hearing the crack of the bat, seeing the ball go, I was like, ‘I wanna do that.’ It was pretty cool to see that energy. You feel it as a player, and it was a good day to wear a Cubs uniform.”
Then Kelly did that. He smoked another home run to left, giving the Cubs the lead and turning Wrigley into a fully krausened mosh pit.
Palencia came back out in the sixth and struck out Machado and Jackson Merrill, then retired Xander Bogaerts on a lineout to center. After an IL stint with a shoulder injury this month, Palencia was finally back where he wanted to be — throwing in triple digits with the crowd on its feet.
“It’s been crazy, but we prepared for this,” Palencia said. “And I’ve been preparing my body and my mind since the offseason, so this is the moment I wanted to be in. Counsell said my job is making outs, and that’s it.”
Palenica’s performance was seen by some as the turning point.
“To be willing to accept any role coming off the IL and being able to accept coming in the fifth,” Ian Happ said. “He was out of the dugout waving a towel at one point with those homers. And to calm himself back down and get that out was big.”
Kittredge said it was fun to watch Palencia, whose emotions are always running high, even in the bullpen.
“Everyone’s first time in the postseason, you never know what you’re going to get,” Kittredge said. “Somebody like him who feeds off energy like that, I’m not surprised at what he did.”
Pomeranz retired three left-handed Padres hitters at the bottom of the order, making his first postseason appearance since he pitched for the Padres in 2020. Until he arrived on the North Side this spring, Pomeranz hadn’t thrown a pitch in the majors since ’21. He wasn’t even watching much of last year’s playoffs, saying it was too painful to know that his career might be done.
“This is awesome, it’s why I wanted to keep playing,” Pomeranz said. “And it’s crazy that it has come full circle against a team I played for.”
Kittredge got a called strikeout of Tatis in a perfect eighth, and after Nico Hoerner added an insurance run with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the inning, Keller came in to close it out.
Keller is another OG with a comeback tale of his own. Released by the White Sox early in their 121-loss season in ’24, he’s risen like a phoenix with the Cubs. Keller called it a “crazy path,” but said it was worth the work it took to prove he wasn’t done.
“It’s been a whirlwind over the last year and a half, two years,” Keller said. “It’s been crazy. It’s a blessing to be here, a blessing to be able to go out and do that. I think I was questioning for a while whether I would play again … Just happy I stuck with it.”
When Keller got a called third strike on Bogaerts to end it, the music was cued up and the crowd began singing “Go, Cubs, Go.”
“That was definitely the coolest environment I’d ever pitched in,” Keller said. “He called strike three and I kind of blacked out, thinking, ‘That was sick.’ The crowd erupted, and I felt like I slowly started showing a little more emotion as I went on, because the game is over, we won and I’m trying to soak it in. Seeing what it means to everybody here was awesome.”
Counsell said the Cubs’ bullpen was “perfect today,” literally and figuratively.
“Just a brilliant job,” he said. “Everybody executed pitches, made pitches. Can’t say enough about what they did today.”
Kelly said it was all a matter of trust, and a matter of believing in each other.
“He’s doing a tremendous job putting us in positions to succeed, and has a lot of trust in us,” Kelly said of Counsell. “And we have a lot of trust in him. Today was a perfect example of that.”