People have taken a good understanding of probability and misapplied it. The Brewers' 8 game-streak doesn't tell us much about the quality of the team, because of sample-sizes. That's certainly true. But their underlying ability level is irrelevant. What matters is the results in this season, not the theoretical results of a million Monte Carlo simulation-seasons. And an eight-game streak in THIS season, lucky or not, has a profound influence on their playoff odds and by extension, ours. Losing the number of games in the standings that we have over the last few games is a serious matter. It can't just be shrugged off, because it does seriously change our playoff odds. We are almost sure, at this point, that we are one of the two best teams in the NL. Certainly one of the three best. But being one of the three best does not guarantee that you won't lose 2 games on the Brewers and 4+ games on someone else over two months. And a month ago, this team had every reason to believe it was virtually guaranteed to be in. Who would challenge us for the Wild Card, assuming the Cards do fade away and Milwaukee can't be beat? 85% is still a pretty darn good number. What were our chances last year at this time? All it would take would be 2 good months from the Cardinals, Marlins or Phillies. The odds of one of those three teams playing wildly over their heads for two months aren't that remote. No... but the odds of them playing over their heads while we play wildly UNDER ours is improbable. Not impossible, but Improbable.