The Cubs fell short in the series finale against the Braves yesterday at Wrigley Field, which was a bit of a bummer for the 31,933 fans who braved the drizzly, overcast weather to see the game in person. That said, they took two of three games in the series to remain on pace for a playoff berth. In fact, as we head into games on the Cubs off day Thursday, the Cubs have a commanding four game lead over the Padres for the second Wild Card spot and a five game lead over the third place Wild Card Mets
(more on them in a second). In fact, the FanGraphs playoff odds charts generally look great from where I sit on the North Side of Chicago:
That 99.8 percent chance at a postseason spot is certainly a welcome development at the corner of Clark and Addison where there hasn’t been a playoff game with fans since the one-card Wild Card Game loss to the Rockies in 2018. But that rosy picture for a Wild Card spot masks exactly how difficult overtaking the Brewers to win the National League Central has become, as you can see in the Divisional odds chart below:
You can see exactly how far behind the Brewers the Cubs fell this summer as the Brewers set a torrid pace including an 11-game and a 14-game winning streak since the start of July.
For reference, it isn’t that the Cubs have been bad since July 1. They’ve gone a perfectly respectable 30-25 during that stretch, for a .545 win percentage over that stretch. The problem is the Brewers have gone an otherworldly 38-17 for a .691 winning percentage over that same 55-game stretch. Oh, and the real kicker? The only reason that Brewers winning percentage begins with a six rather than a seven is that they’ve finally cooled off and had an 8-10 stretch since August 17.
Honestly, looking at those numbers gives me a bit more optimism about the Cubs chances in October than the Brewers. One of the mathematical realities of the long baseball season is that most teams, regardless of how good or bad they wind up, will have a hot stretch and a cold stretch at some point during the season. Part of putting together a strong postseason run in October is timing your hottest stretch with the very end of the season. While it’s certainly possible that the Brewers have a third 10+ game winning streak in them before the end of the season, it seems a lot more likely that the Cubs would have their first 10+ game winning streak of the season before it’s all said and done than that the Brewers would have a third improbable run during that time.
In fact, there’s been a lot of speculation over the years that maybe having that first round bye makes getting back into the swing of competitive baseball a bit difficult, even for the best teams. This vein of argument was particularly popular after upstart runs to the World Series by the Wild Card Phillies in 2022 followed by an all Wild Card World Series between the Diamondbacks and Rangers in 2023.
Quite a bit of ink was used last October trying to defend the benefits of winning the Division and getting a bye. In the spirit of this piece built on the logic of statistical regression and probability, I’m going to side with the numbers nerds that its likely a fluke that the early results of the expanded playoffs favored Wild Card teams. But I think it’s still fair to wonder if the current format favors the hot hand and momentum. Wild Card teams are more likely to be playing meaningful baseball late in the season and into the Wild Card round. Those early win or go home three-game series set a very high bar while other teams are practicing, and it’s exactly the type of format where a team on a hot streak can make an unexpected run. After all, a Wild Card team needs 13 wins to win the World Series, it certainly seems like being in the middle of a hot stretch would make that 13 wins more likely.
