The Odds Are Terrible, the Stakes Are High, and Yet, Cubs Have At Least Commanded Attention

Winning series wasn't good enough. The Cubs needed a genuine hot streak, and a genuine hot streak means sweeping some people. With a scintillating comeback Wednesday afternoon, the team asserted itself, finishing off a three-game sweep in Pittsburgh that launches them into an off day on a surge of momentum. They've won four straight series, are 17-9 since the trade deadline, and have made much of this headway on the strength of strong performances from their young players.

The odds against this late surge amounting to anything are long. The Cubs trail Atlanta by 5.5 games, and you can count it as 6.0, because Atlanta holds the tiebreaker. In that hot month of play, they've only gained a game on the Braves in the standings. If the team goes anything less than 20-8 the rest of the way, they have almost no chance to make the postseason--and crucially, finishing just outside the playoffs for a second straight season would be a worst-case scenario.

Last year, the Cubs drafted 13th, after an ultimately unhelpful strong finish to 2022 and a bit of bad luck in the Draft Lottery. They picked 14th this July, after their late charge fell two games shy of the playoffs in 2023. Some better fortune or a truly nightmarish September could put them back in the top 10 next summer, but right now, they're angling toward another pick in the same range. For a team reluctant to spend the way big-market behemoths should and facing four division rivals who all get extra picks to bolster their Draft classes each year, that would be a disaster. The team is trending too much toward the recent patterns traced by the Bulls, in the NBA: be competitive, draw fans, settle into the unhappy medium of the league, and wallow perpetually in averageness.

To break free of that bad cycle, they need to convert this year's fake rally to a playoff spot, and that's a very tall order. They've made these difficult circumstances for themselves, and have only themselves to blame, but that doesn't matter, now. They can't afford to think conservatively. For the next 28 games (or however many they play before cooling off again and tumbling out of the race), the Cubs are running for their lives, and they need to act like it.

When the 2018 Cubs entered September, they held a reasonably comfortable lead over Craig Counsell's Brewers. They didn't collapse, either. From Sept. 1 through the end of the scheduled regular season, Joe Maddon's team went 16-12. Counsell's Crew went 19-7, though, to close the gap and force a Game 163--which, of course, they also won. Counsell led Milwaukee to a 20-7 record after the calendar turned to September again the next year, to seize a place in the Wild Card Game. They started calling it Craigtember, in Wisconsin. The Cubs' kick began in August, but it has to stay just as strong from here.

The cruel facts are that even that kind of heater won't be enough this time. The Cubs need Counsell to work his magic, but they have to do it even better, and they'd still need more help than the Brewers got from the Cubs in catching them six years ago. Since they've locked themselves out of the cellar, though, the only place to go is forward. Two 20-7 months made Counsell famous. Pushing that to 21-7 on the third go-round might just get them across the line in time to qualify for the playoffs. We might as well see if he's capable of helping a team find that one more tick of greatness, when it really counts.