{"id":770006,"date":"2026-07-18T09:43:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T09:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/770006\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T09:43:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T09:43:34","slug":"sb-nation-reacts-the-cubs-will-be-a-wild-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/770006\/","title":{"rendered":"SB Nation Reacts: The Cubs will be a Wild Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Cubs fans and fans across the country. Sign up here<\/a> to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.<\/p>\n

The Cubs begin the \u201csecond half\u201d (actually, the second \u201ca bit more than 40 percent\u201d) of the 2026 season tonight against the Minnesota Twins at Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n

They stand five games behind the Brewers for first place in the NL Central, and one game ahead of the Phillies for the top wild card spot (incidentally, thanks Mets for defeating the Phillies Thursday!).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good position for a postseason spot. Obviously a division title and possible first-round bye would be better, but the Cubs hosted a Wild Card series against the Padres last year and won it before being eliminated in the division series round by the Brewers.<\/p>\n

So earlier this week in the SB Nation Reacts survey I asked you where you thought the Cubs would finish. Here are the results:<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where I\u2019m going to disagree with the majority. I think the Cubs are going to continue the run they\u2019re on (20-8 over the last four and a half weeks before the All-Star break) and beat out the Brewers and be NL Central champions. And if they are, I also think they\u2019ll have a better record than the Braves, and so will join the Dodgers as the division champions with first-round byes.<\/p>\n

The Cubs seem well positioned to make the postseason regardless, as the majority of voters in the survey said. Six percent disagree with that and said the Cubs won\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n

As always, we await developments.<\/p>\n

Here are the results for the two national questions asked in this week\u2019s survey.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m surprised that this number is only 59 percent. It seems clear that MLB made a mistake moving the Draft from June to the All-Star break. The purported reason for that was to get the Draft more attention, and instead it\u2019s getting less, buried among several other All-Star week events. This is how bad it got:<\/p>\n

The last item would be funny if it weren\u2019t so sad. Beyond all this, putting the Draft in July means front offices have to pay attention to that rather than the Trade Deadline, which is now just 17 days away. It would be a good idea to separate those, in my view.<\/p>\n

Move the Futures Game to Sunday and make it the featured Sunday Night Baseball game. And make it a nine-inning affair again. That\u2019s a simple and elegant solution.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the rest of the MLB season. It begins again in just a few hours!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[306968,363,99],"class_list":["post-770006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-chicago-cubs-analysis","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}