Jed Hoyer, the Chicago Cubs’ president of baseball operations, issued a blunt warning at the team’s first staff meeting of the spring.

Get ready, Hoyer told the team’s front office and coaching staff. Change was coming. New manager Craig Counsell was going to be a disruptive force.

“This is gonna be uncomfortable,” Hoyer recalled saying to the group. “He’s gonna see things through a different lens. He’s gonna want to do things differently. We have to embrace that. We have to embrace being uncomfortable.”

Hoyer had brought this on himself, and the entire organization. Not only did he stun the baseball world by naming Counsell to replace David Ross on Nov. 6, but he also made his new hire the highest-paid manager in the game, signing him to a five-year, $40 million contract.

With money comes power. Yet, that was only part of the Cubs’ shifting dynamic. Hoyer knew Counsell would challenge him, and the team’s status quo. After three straight failures to make the playoffs, and three straight finishes behind Counsell’s previous club, the Milwaukee Brewers, pushback is exactly what Hoyer wanted.

Counsell said Hoyer did not request that of him explicitly the first time they met on Nov. 1. But at the staff meeting, Hoyer made his intentions clear, if they weren’t already. “I felt that for sure,” Counsell said. “I felt certainly that Jed wants to have the debate and be challenged on his assumptions. He said it in front of the whole organization. So yeah, I do feel the responsibility to do it rather than not.”

He’s doing it, all right. From offering dissenting opinions on potential acquisitions to questioning the type of information the Cubs present on their proprietary database, Counsell is making an impact on virtually every part of the organization. Not just raising questions. But providing answers.

“There are a lot of people that can complain really well. Finding things that aren’t going well is really easy to do in a large organization,” Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins said. “But finding people that can actually understand the system, understand the levers we can pull to make us better, that’s harder to find.”

Counsell, 53, is not an imposing physical presence with his slight build and youthful appearance. But he is inquisitive by nature, the opposite of a yes man. And while Ross was somewhat beholden to a front office that gave him a chance to manage when he had never coached at any level, Counsell draws from a wealth of experience, both on and off the field. He has the rare ability, Hoyer said, to both connect with players and engage in cerebral conversations with executives.

After retiring as a player, Counsell served as a special assistant to former Brewers GM Doug Melvin from 2012 to ‘15. As Brewers manager, he worked for one of the game’s most progressive front offices, led first by David Stearns and then Matt Arnold.

Hoyer, after doing background work on Counsell, recalled telling him at their first meeting, “I understand you will be tough to work with at times.” Counsell did not dispute that assessment. As The Athletic’s Patrick Mooney wrote, he essentially told Hoyer don’t bother with an offer if you’re just looking for someone to run the bullpen.

“He has really strong opinions and he’s going to share them and he’s not going to back down,” Hoyer said. “He wants things done a certain way. When they’re not done a certain way, he’s going to voice that. And with every person I talked to, it was always viewed as a positive.”

Had the Cubs gone stale? Hoyer doesn’t put it in quite those terms. Nor does he blame Ross, a first-time manager who led the Cubs to the playoffs in his debut season, the shortened 2020 campaign. But as Hoyer put it, “It had been almost 10 years since we had brought in a fresh perspective.”

Joe Maddon took over as manager at the end of 2014. Ross, part of Maddon’s teams in ‘15 and ‘16, was essentially an internal hire. The front office, too, had unusual continuity. Theo Epstein arrived as president of baseball operations in October 2011 and hired Hoyer as GM. Hoyer ascended to the top job after Epstein stepped down in November 2020. The hiring of Hawkins from the Cleveland Guardians’ front office in October 2021 brought a view from the outside that for too long, perhaps, was missing.

Hawkins, though, was largely unknown as Cleveland’s assistant GM, familiar only to those who follow front-office workings. Counsell, widely considered one of the best managers in the game, commands a different level of respect. His Brewers teams routinely outperformed expectations, contending annually with bottom-half and sometimes bottom-third Opening Day payrolls.

The Brewers, playing in the smallest television market in the majors, need to operate as efficiently as possible. Their shrewd approach and occasionally unorthodox decision-making gave Counsell unique insight into roster construction. In discussing the Cubs’ offensive needs during the offseason, Hoyer mentioned to Counsell that the team needed a No. 3 hitter. No, Counsell replied, what we need is a three-win player, one who offers three wins above replacement.

The difference in their word choices became a running joke between them. Hoyer’s terminology is more commonly associated with old-school managers. Counsell’s with new-school executives. In essence, though, they were talking about the same thing. And on Sunday, Hoyer finally landed the type of player they were describing, agreeing with center fielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger on a three-year, $80 million free-agent contract, with opt-outs after the first and second seasons.

“One thing I have learned as a manager is how much the whole player matters to adding wins to your team,” Counsell said. “I learned this, for sure, from people in Milwaukee. The total player is really important. And the value of defense on a team, now that we are better at quantifying it, is really important.”

While the three-hole hitter/three-win player discussion was somewhat lighthearted, perhaps the best example of Counsell using his voice thus far was in his questioning of the data the Cubs displayed on each player page in their database. Hawkins said the team was including traditional statistics with limited predictive value. The presentation had not changed in years. Counsell evidently was the first to suggest it was outdated.

Counsell proposed other changes as well, saying the Cubs’ user interface was like looking at a different language. “But then you realize that there’s also like, 150 people that have been using it the same way for a long time,” he said. “Now, do you ask questions about why and is there a better way? Yes.”

Which, of course, is what Hoyer expected.

“It would be disappointing almost,” Hoyer said, “if he came in like, ‘Oh yeah, I like all this stuff, everything’s great.”

In the staff meeting to kick off spring training, Hoyer told Cubs employees when he calls Counsell with a question, he doesn’t know what the answer will be. Such uncertainty is normal when a boss talks to a new employee. It’s also different from what Hoyer experienced with Ross, and potentially awkward.

Here’s something else that is potentially awkward: Counsell is signed through 2028 while Hoyer is under contract only through ‘25. And, while Hoyer’s exact salary is not known, it almost certainly is below $8 million per season.

Such imbalances are not uncommon in the NFL, where few GMs earn more than head coaches. They also are not unheard of in baseball. Joe Torre at his peak with the Yankees in the late 2000s earned $7.5 million, which presumably was more than GM Brian Cashman. And there are other examples as well.

Salaries for managers, however, have been trending downward. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported last season that six managers earned less than $1 million and 15 were at $1.75 million or below. One of Counsell’s goals in becoming a free-agent manager was to raise the bar financially for his managerial peers.

So, what does that mean for Hoyer?

At first, Hoyer responded with a joke, saying, “He gives me loans.”

But seriously…

“People have brought that up,” Hoyer said. “My job is to do everything I can to make this team better, the organization better. If he makes more money than me and has a longer contract, that’s the least of my worries. I think he’s earned what he makes. He did a great job in Milwaukee. He’s got a great reputation. He was willing to bet on himself, and he deserves it.”

For his part, Counsell does not believe his contract creates an uncomfortable balance of power with Hoyer, saying, “I don’t think it does. I don’t feel like it does.” Besides, money was not his only motivation in leaving the Brewers for the Cubs. He, too, wanted a change. The Cubs offer greater resources — their projected $225 million payroll, according to FanGraphs, is more than twice that of the Brewers’ — and a fresh start.

“The thrill for me is to walk into this place and be energized to help an organization . . . to take that journey, put us in a place where every year we’re right there,” Counsell said. “I’m not looking to have a bigger say. I’m looking to have partners in doing that, that challenge me as well.”

Likewise, Hawkins said, the Cubs, “have to constantly be evolving. If you don’t, you find yourself in these troughs that are uncomfortable to be in. That 2021 and 2022 trough we were in was uncomfortable. We don’t want that anymore. So we know we have to continue to change. And when we start having the real success that we want to have, we’re going to need to change again.”

The Cubs had to start somewhere. They started with the biggest agent of change available. A manager who is empowered to challenge all that has come before.