Brewers - 3, Cubs - 1
CRAIG COUNSELL: First, just congratulations to the Brewers. It's a very good baseball team and a team that deserves and earned their way for the right to to go to the World Series. That's a good baseball team.
Q. How would you describe the feelings, the conversations after the game in the clubhouse, and just the emotions you're feeling right now?
CRAIG COUNSELL: Well, I mean, I'm disappointed. I'm sad. I think this team did a lot to honor the Chicago Cub uniform. In the big picture, that's how I feel.
But what did we do wrong tonight? That's kind of what you're stuck on. Why couldn't we get anything going? It's hard to get past that right now.
Q. In general, it seemed like you guys didn't put a lot of pressure there, but in the sixth inning, that seemed like the game -- you had your key guys up with two men on and no outs and couldn't get the big hit. That seemed like that was the theme, not getting the big hit in general this series.
CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah, I mean, we had six base runners tonight. If you take Seiya's homer and those two, that's half of our base runners. That was the inning. That was the inning with the middle of the lineup up.
Ashby made a pretty darned good pitch, 3-2 to Tucker. Looked like right down away on the corner. It was a nasty pitch. Seiya had a good at-bat against Patrick for sure -- had good at-bats all night, Seiya did.
And then they got out of it essentially, they got a chance to get out of it.
That, I agree, it's really the only inning you could talk about. We just didn't do much. We had six base runners. You're going to have to hit homers to have any runs scoring in scenarios like that.
They pitched very well. I mean, they pitched super well and we didn't. The only inning that we disrupted, maybe, the plan was the sixth. But the rest of the game, they did a heck of a job.
Q. Going on, if you look at the guys who produced tonight, it was Nico, Seiya and Busch, and the rest of the lineup struggled. Do you put that more on the pitching or is it some of the approaches and some of the results that happened?
CRAIG COUNSELL: Look, we faced -- this team is loaded with very good pitching. It's certainly a strength of the team. And it's why they've won so many games. Misiorowski got four innings and got 12 outs for them, and that put the game in pretty good order for them.
They pitched well. They did. They pitched well. We took some good swings off Uribe, just at-'em balls. They pitched well.
Q. From the pitching side, on your guys' end, just how did you feel like things unfolded in terms of laying out how you wanted to use those guys? And then conversely being so close with those two-out solo home runs?
CRAIG COUNSELL: In general, we pitched well. If you would have told me we gave up three runs going into tonight you'd probably have to say, yep, we pitched well, with running a full bullpen game. I would have been happy with that.
When you give up the runs, you could say what-if, but they hit some pitches. Maybe Colin's pitch to Andrew Vaughn, probably want that one back. But Pomeranz's pitch was a pretty good pitch.
The guys did their job. It didn't really go necessarily the way I thought it was going to go. But I thought we did a nice job, and the guys pieced it together.
Q. It might be a little hard to consider this question already, but you're two seasons in, you improved by, I think, nine games. But you haven't won the division, you haven't surmounted the Brewers, are you encouraged, are you pleased with the progress, the trajectory two years in?
CRAIG COUNSELL: I mean, we won 92 games this year. You'll take that every single year. I think every team would. The playoffs are a different animal. It's completely different than the season, totally different.
Ultimately, the reason why you want to win 92 games is because you want to play in a World Series and win a World Series. And we should have those expectations. We should have them every year. That's why -- when you say win 90 games because you've got a chance to win the World Series if you do that.
When you don't do it, it's disappointing. But 92 games, winning 92 games is not disappointing.
Q. Obviously both teams well-acquainted with each other, both fan bases well acquainted with each other. There was a lot of momentum in Chicago when you guys were there, a lot of momentum for games 1 and 2. How important is home-field advantage in this series? And what can you say about the crowds at Wrigley and the crowds here?
CRAIG COUNSELL: I think, look, both ways are fun, really. I mean, it's fun going against a hostile crowd and it's fun playing in front of your own crowd. And you've got to embrace both, but they're different.
Yeah, I think you'd rather always have more games at home. The numbers don't necessarily say it's a huge advantage. But, absolutely, I wish -- to get home-field advantage is always one of the goals you have in a season, of course. Skipping the first round is one of the goals you have in the season.
We gave ourselves a shot. And that part of it, you'd kind of take every year, give yourself a shot.
Q. You said early on that you think this team did a lot to make the Chicago fan base proud to wear the Chicago Cubs uniform. What stood out to you this series or this year in general?
CRAIG COUNSELL: There's a lot that goes into it. But I think it's the five games we played at Wrigley Field in the playoffs kind of tells you what means so much to it. I think it meant so much to our players to do that, to provide that for our fans.
And that's what you do: You honor the uniform; you honor the place. That's like not the results goal, but that's always like what our job is to do, is to do those two things.
And we did that. We didn't get it done today, and that hurts. Man, it doesn't feel good, but I think when you zoom back a little bit, we did some good things as well.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports