Are the Cubs still in this?
The answer is complicated. Well, no, actually it's really not.
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Mike Tauchman was so excited by the Cubs win on Sunday night that he declared the team still in the hunt in the National League Wild Card race. Unlike after Thursday’s win over the Cardinals he was wearing a shirt this time, so he was easier to take seriously. But Mike, we’ve been watching your team since the end of March and the hunt is something you are definitely not in.
Right?
The Cubs entered last night’s game against the Twins eight in the NL Wild Card standings, six games behind the D’bags for the final spot. With 48 (now, 47) games left in the season making up six games on anybody is a tall task for even a good team, and well, you know. But also you have to pass four other teams just to get to Arizona.
A half-assed way to gauge the difficulty is to add the games you are behind the teams between you and your target to your games behind. For example, the Cubs are six behind Arizona and right in front of them are the Giants who are 1.5 games ahead of the Cubs, so that’s 7.5, the Cardinals and Pirates are 2.5 ahead of the Cubs so that’s either ten or 12.5, I’m not sure, but we know they both suck so let’s just leave it at ten and then the Mets are five ahead of the Cubs so that’s 17.5.
It’s not a mathematical impossibility for the Cubs to make up 17.5 games with 48 games to go, but it’s pretty fucking close.
The reason it’s so hard to pass multiple teams late in the season is that you keeping needing them to lose most of their games and you need to start winning at a decent clip, certainly a better clip than the Cubs have done since May. Plus the teams will inevitably end up playing each other so there are nights when you can’t gain on somebody because they can’t all lose at the same time.
So, in order to make this interesting you need to get hot and stay hot and you need four teams in front of you to all fall on their asses.
However, while we certainly can’t bank on the Cubs getting hot, does it really seem all that impossible that the Giants, Cardinals, Pirates and Mets could all shit themselves repeatedly in August and September?
