Spiegel: 'Craig Counsell is doing a helluva job'

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00:00I feel like Craig Council is doing a hell of a job, and there's a couple different things I want to throw at you about that.

00:07One is just the overall attentiveness of everybody on that roster, the quality of defense, the quality of base running.

00:16Because even last year, you know, as we would look at teams like the Brewers or other teams,

00:21I always want to find out who plays clean, who's playing real clean, or like Cliff Floyd likes to call him, a button-up team.

00:27I guess a button-up team.

00:30Dude, these Cubs play like a button-up team.

00:33So when you add that, when you have that as like the baseline to the quality of batting that's going on,

00:39the number of different hitters, and all the different individual performances,

00:43I don't feel like they're going to screw up the game.

00:46I don't feel like they're going to screw up a situation.

00:48Matt Shaw's playing great defense at third base.

00:50They got a lot of pieces that are doing the right things.

00:53I feel like they are a button-up team, and that's kind of the overall sort of amorphous thing.

00:57You can't often pinpoint where the credit goes, but some of it, and I've got more specific things,

01:02but some of that has to go to the manager.

01:04I would imagine that there is a standard that is being set.

01:08It also helps when you have players that do care about some of that stuff.

01:12Like, Ian Happ clearly cares about outfield defense and base running.

01:17Pico Armstrong, which I think is a bit of a wild card, we knew that he could go and get it out in center field.

01:23So, watching his progress as a base runner to me has been joyous.

01:28We know that Dansby Swanson and Nico Horner in the middle of your defense are just excellent.

01:32Michael Bush now, at the quality of first base that that dude is playing, I mean, just add it to that list.

01:38You throw all of that stuff together.

01:40Your catchers have been offensively phenomenal, and defensively they've been fine.

01:45So, you throw all of that together along with guys that you don't expect to give you the defense from the pitching side.

01:52You didn't expect that Jamison Tyone was going to, well, maybe we expected it.

01:57We know there's someone here who didn't.

01:59But the guy giving you quality start after quality start after quality start.

02:04We know there's someone here who didn't expect to give you the defense from the pitching side to the pitching side.