{"id":88677,"date":"2025-08-22T12:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T12:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/88677\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T12:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T12:25:09","slug":"resetting-cubs-postseason-outlook-after-series-vs-brewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/88677\/","title":{"rendered":"Resetting Cubs Postseason Outlook After Series Vs. Brewers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They have a 5 1\/2 game cushion in the NL Wild Card race (and remain a game up on the San Diego Padres for the top spot). As of Thursday night, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fangraphs.com\/standings\/playoff-odds?date=2025-08-21&amp;dateDelta=\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FanGraphs still gave them<\/a> 98.6 percent shot to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, the Cubs\u2019 best chance to get back to the postseason seems to be the wild card. A \u2018W\u2019 Thursday would\u2019ve brought their deficit in the NL Central down to five games, but the loss raised it back to seven. So, despite winning the series, they only trimmed the Brewers\u2019 lead by one game with 34 left to play.<\/p>\n<p>Chasing down a team who\u2019s been as hot as the Brewers over nearly three months feels like a steep climb. FanGraphs also gave the MLB leaders a 91.4 percent chance to win the division.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not an insurmountable lead, of course. Odds are only odds at the end of the day. In 2023, FanGraphs gave the Cubs over a 92 percent chance to make the postseason on FanGraphs on Sept. 6 (and you know how that ended).<\/p>\n<p>Taking three of five this week means the Cubs won the season series and own the potential tiebreaker. Plus, the Brewers themselves turned a four-game deficit on July 6 into a three-game lead on Aug. 4 \u2014 a seven-game swing in the standings, like the Cubs would need moving forward \u2014 in just 22 games.<\/p>\n<p>However, that included an 18-4 record over that stretch. The Cubs went 11-11 at the same time. They played well this week, but they haven\u2019t recently shown they have that standings-flipping run in them. There\u2019s no guarantee the Brewers would play .500 ball if the Cubs go on a run, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They have a 5 1\/2 game cushion in the NL Wild Card race (and remain a game up&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-88677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}