Milwaukee Brewers celebrate series win over Chicago Cubs in NLDS
The Milwaukee Brewers celebrate their playoff series win over the Chicago Cubs on Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, at American Family Field, to advance to the National League Championship Series.
The all-time winningest manager in Milwaukee Brewers history found himself apart from the champagne celebration after the Brewers won their first playoff series in seven years.
“First, just congratulations to the Brewers,” Craig Counsell said Oct. 11 during his postgame remarks after the Brewers defeated his new team, the Chicago Cubs, in the fifth and final game of the National League Division Series, 3-1. “It’s a very good baseball team and a team that deserves and earned their way for the right to go on to the World Series. That’s a good baseball team.”
Counsell was at the helm the last time the Brewers got this far, also facing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2018 NL Championsip Series. In his second season since bolting for the Cubs’ job, he shepherded a team to 92 wins, the first playoff berth since 2020 and a playoff-series win before bowing out at the hands of his former team.
“I mean, I’m disappointed,” he said. “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.”
Counsell continued to credit Brewers pitching, lamented a missed opportunity when they had two runners on with nobody out in the sixth inning and pointed to home-field advantage as a factor in the series outcome.
“To get home-field advantage is always one of the goals you have in a season, of course,” Counsell said. “Skipping the first round is one of the goals you have in a season. We gave ourselves a shot. That part of it, you’d kind of take every year. Give yourself a shot.
“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. … When you don’t do it, it’s disappointing. But 92 games, winning 92 games is not disappointing.”
Counsell said he felt his team achieved the goal to “honor the uniform.”
“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.”