They're competing them with them by doing the same thing those teams are doing: winning series and beating up on the bad teams. No team plays mostly good teams in a season, and bad teams don't consistently beat up on other bad teams: then they wouldn't be bad teams. Im with 100%. It is just my personal opinion that the Cubs still have a ways to go, get Llly/Dempster back and healthy, Soto, etc. before I can be convinced that this team has a good chance of winning something. I'm encouraged by the play as of late, I hope it continues. This team has the pieces, maybe they are starting to fall into place. What they need to have a good chance of winning is the division. Given the fact that they are a half game out of first place at the moment, they obviously have a decent enough chance at doing that. If that's done, they essentially have as good a chance as every other playoff team (and as much of a chance as last year's team had going in to the playoffs) of winning a World Series. Let's not try to make this more complicated than it is.