Quantifying Nope: Playoff Odds Drop to Nil as Counsell Says ‘We’ve Got to Get Better, Man’

The Cubs got a win Thursday night to stave off the dreaded mathematical elimination, but being seven games back with nine to go means FanGraphs now has them at 0.0% for the postseason. Even running the table and getting to 86 wins would leave them needing the Braves to go 3-6 while the Mets faceplant with a 1-8 finish. Ain’t happening.

Just being above .500 and having a win total in the mid-80s shouldn’t be the goal for any team, let alone one that was apparently okay with pushing payroll into luxury tax penalties. Cracks in the foundation of this roster were evident from the start and they ended up being exposed at various points throughout the season.

“We’ve got to get better, man,” Counsell told reporters prior to the game. “We should be trying to build 90-win teams here. That’s what you have to do. That’s the playoff standard.”

She lies and says she’s in love with them, got to get better, man…
She dreams in blue and she dreams in red, got need to get better man…
Got to get better man
Got to get better man

While I don’t think that was a veiled jab at Jed Hoyer and the front office, it’s certainly a challenge to baseball ops to be better. Hoyer talked back in January about not being profligate with his budget, yet he burned up way too much on interchangeable pieces rather than investing more in the “certainty” of proven stars. It’s no different than going to Amazon and opting for the cheaper version of a product that’s being sold by a company with a name that can’t possibly come from any actual language.

Sometimes those purchases work out swimmingly and you end up with a great bargain. Other times, you end up just having to chalk it up as a loss and spend more money on the better product or just go without. Rather than listing out names like Héctor Neris, Trey Mancini, and others, I’ll let you make a list in your head. You could throw Drew Smyly in there, but that’s more a matter of the team inexplicably not selling high even at a loss.

Anyway, this all means we can enjoy — or maybe just ignore — the last several games of the season without much concern for what happens. It’d be nice to see some new faces here at the end just to liven things up, but I think that ship has sailed.