After spending big on Counsell, will Cubs continue trend with roster?

The Cubs made Craig Counsell the highest-paid manager in MLB history on Monday - by a wide margin.

When his contract with the Brewers expired after the season, the Cubs swooped in and signed Counsell to a staggering five-year, $40 million deal. The $8 million annual average doubles the record $4 million Bruce Bochy made with the Padres.

Counsell, who managed Milwaukee for nine seasons and guided the small-market Brewers to the playoffs five times in the last six years, has been vocal in the past about managers being woefully underpaid.

His new contract with the Cubs should make many of his peers much more wealthy in the seasons ahead, but Counsell said leaving the Brewers was about more than money.

"Look, I just wanted the market to decide," Counsell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "That's it. I think as I was going through this process, it became clear that I needed and wanted a new professional challenge."

Money does matter to the Cubs' front office, ditto to the Brewers.

Even though the Cubs' annual player payroll is always higher than Milwaukee's, Counsell has had much more success as a manager than David Ross, whom the Cubs fired Monday to create the opening in the dugout.

Stealing a classic line from former football coach Bum Phillips talking about Paul "Bear" Bryant, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said this about the 53-year-old Counsell at the GM meetings in Phoenix this week, "He'll take his and beat yours and he'll take yours and beat his."

Counsell has been a whiz during the regular season, but the Brewers did lose 9 of their last 10 playoff games when he was in the dugout.

The postseason failure obviously did not steer Hoyer away from going all in on Counsell.

"It just felt like an exceptionally hard decision, but one that I felt like I had to make if the opportunity was there," Hoyer said. "This is no knock on Rossy, who I think incredibly highly of, but Craig is at the very top of the game. It's hard to rank managers, but he's at the top of the game."

The Cubs have been gradually increasing payroll since breaking up the powerhouse team that won the 2016 World Series.

Now that they've spent big on their new manager, do they follow suit and make a run at free-agent Shohei Ohtani and other premier talents?

"I don't think with (Counsell), we signal that we're going to have some crazy, aggressive off-season," Hoyer said. "But certainly, I really like our position. And if there are moves, even big moves, that will help us continue that trajectory, we'll definitely do it.

"But I don't think it's a signal that somehow we're going to have the biggest and boldest off-season. If we do, it's because things lined up for us."