With a crucial stretch now here, can the Cubs make a run to October?

Seiya Suzuki threw his helmet in the air halfway between first and second base, just before Chicago Cubs first-base coach Mike Napoli could embrace him with a hug.

Suzuki had just shot a 2-2 slider through the left side to drive in Ian Happ from second base in the bottom of the 10th, giving the Cubs (60-63) a 6-5 win over the Toronto Blue Jays and giving Suzuki his first walk-off in the major leagues. When his team needed him to, he delivered.

“I remember my last walk off in Japan,” Suzuki said through interpreter Edwin Stanberry. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Japan or the U.S. Just being able to hit in that situation, being able to come through in that situation makes me happy, and I’m glad the fans were here and I was able to come through for them, too.”

It wasn’t the prettiest win, of course.

A two-run home run from Cody Bellinger in the bottom of the first followed later by solo shots from Pete Crow-Armstrong, Miguel Amaya and Happ gave the Cubs a three-run lead entering the ninth. However, Héctor Neris — who still causes many fans to get nervous when he takes the bump, despite a 1.17 ERA over his last 16 outings entering Friday — just wasn’t effective.

The Blue Jays loaded the bases four batters in on three base hits. Then, as Neris seemed to get a called strike three for the second out, he was instead called for a balk that brought a run in. Though he eventually ended that at-bat with a punchout, he then gave up a game-tying triple that sent the game to extras.

Tyson Miller‘s 1-2-3 inning (even with the automatic runner on second base) and Suzuki’s walk-off helped the Cubs re-capture the win, though, and in the end, it comes down to how manager Craig Counsell put it in his postgame presser.

“No one likes to give up runs,” he said. “Héctor did today. He gave up the lead, but he kept it there and we got the job done. And it’s a win, and that’s the big thing. It’d be great to pick out every win and make them beautiful. But a win’s a win.”

A win’s a win, indeed, and at this point, the Cubs just need as many of them as they can get. They understand the hole they’ve dug themselves, and winning games is the only way out.

As it stands, they’ve done enough to remain in the playoff picture, but that hasn’t been enough to get themselves over the hump.

Sure, they haven’t had many extended stretches of losing. They’ve lost five straight just once while dropping four straight only one other time, and in fact, their last series in Cleveland was the first time they’ve been swept all year.

On the other hand, there haven’t been a ton of long winning streaks, either. The Cubs won five in a row twice to go along with two other four-game streaks, and yes, they’ve swept teams five times (though two were two-game sets against the Chicago White Sox). Still, that hasn’t led to the kind of long stretch of consistent winning that they’ve needed to climb the standings.

“Explaining hot streaks and cold streaks and teams that are prone to them I don’t think is a good business to be in. I think it’s tough to do,” Counsell said. “Our challenge, if you want to frame it over a certain amount of games, the challenge is to play consistently good. And we just haven’t been consistent enough to create one of those streaks. I think that’s how you gotta rationalize it. That’s what’s happened. We haven’t been consistent enough to get on one of those streaks.

“Maybe there is a good break in there. Maybe there’s a game that kind of gets you over the hump that you got a little lucky, and absolutely for those streaks. But consistently, I don’t think we’ve earned one of those streaks, and our job is to be consistent enough where we earn it.”

Earning it is a must as this team tries to claw back toward the top of the standings.

After their off-day Thursday, the Cubs were four games below .500, 10 1/2 games back in the National League Central and 5 1/2 games out of the last NL wild card spot. Their odds to make the playoffs (according to FanGraphs) sat at 3.4 percent. The chart below, showing the Cubs’ running playoff odds across the 2024 season, is a good indicator of how much their margin for error has shrunk.

They at least started to earn that winning streak by pulling out Friday’s game over Toronto, but they have to keep that positive momentum going considering who they’ve got in front of them.

The Cubs’ next 17 games are against teams who entered Friday with sub-.500 records. Then, after a pair of series against legitimate World Series contenders, 13 of their final 16 games of the year are once again versus teams who entered Friday under .500.

To be fair, the Cubs themselves are still below .500, so they can’t afford to overlook any of those ballclubs. They’ve also got five teams they’d have to jump in the wild card standings, so even taking care of their own business is no guarantee.

But even with the sweep in Cleveland, they entered Friday with the third-best record in the NL since July 4. They have been playing better baseball as of late, and now, they’re in a stretch against a bunch of teams looking up at them in the MLB standings.

But again, the Cubs know they can’t take anyone ahead of them lightly.

“We know exactly where we’re at, and it’s been that way for a while,” Kyle Hendricks said. “It’s the opportunity that’s in front of us. That’s the exact word. The opportunity that’s in front of us every single day. Today, it doesn’t matter how it looks, how we get it done. A win’s a win. That was big today, and just move on to tomorrow. But we can’t put too much ahead of us. It’s really one day at a time. No matter the opponent, no matter what, gotta play our best baseball and just stack some wins here.”

Still, if the Cubs’ are going to make a run up the standings and toward October, this would be a good stretch to start getting there.

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