It’s a strange time of year. Morning air has a little more bite to it, a few of the leaves are starting to color, and the football season is getting started. And while it feels like the baseball season should be turning the corner to the playoffs, there are still just under 20 games left, and with those, plenty of chances for the postseason picture to change, at least a little.
It is a very narrow possibility that the Cubs chase down the Brewers for the top spot in the division at this point. The most likely scenario — and this has been the case for a while — is that the Cubs reach the playoffs for the first time since 2020 as a wild card team, just like they did that year. And there’s a good chance the Cubs will stay ahead of the Padres for the top wild card spot and host that round at Wrigley Field.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. There are still three weeks of the regular season to be played, and a lot can happen in that time.
“This point of the season is a little bit of a trap in that it’s like, you are close, but 20 games is also a lot of results,” manager Craig Counsell said. “The best thing you try to do is keep your eye on the day to day [and] not get caught up in forward thinking.”
It’s awfully tempting though, to look beyond the next three weeks and start lining up a wild card series rotation or imagining who will bat leadoff in a postseason series. Nearly to a man, the guys in the Cubs locker room will say they don’t spend a lot of time standings-watching, and even now, as the season is winding down, there isn’t yet much focus on much beyond the game or the series that’s in front of them.
But even for the people wearing the uniform, they are aware that the end of the season is getting close. And with that, they are aware that the outcomes of the next three weeks could still make the difference between playing the wild card round at home or out in San Diego. Or something even worse.
Nothing is locked yet, and Counsell said he doesn’t anticipate his team’s playoff status being solidified for a while to come. He was careful speaking to the media before Sunday’s game against the Nationals not to come off like he is discounting anything, but Counsell said there’s a spot on the calendar that he does have his eye on for when the Cubs might know for certain what playoff spot they’ve nailed down.
“If I looked ahead, we’ve got a Mets series [when] nothing’s going to happen before that,” Counsell said of the home games against New York September 23-25. “Nothing’s going to be decided before that Mets series. That’s kind of how I’m looking at it.”
Counsell acknowledged that there’s just as much of a chance that it takes into the season’s final weekend, when the Cubs will host the Cardinals, and that means his focus will remain on staying as competitive as possible in order to avoid a very late season slide. Even if the Cubs have a nearly 100 percent chance of at least reaching the postseason, and a 97.8% chance of getting a wild card spot, according to Fangraphs’ projections as of Sunday morning.
One major roadblock to doing that might be the health of his team and whether some of the players in Counsell’s lineup can get back to the kind of offensive production they were having in April and May. The latter is tough for Counsell to do much about. He can shuffle batting orders and be strategic about matchups, but sometimes a slump just needs a few well-placed hard hit balls to be over. As for injuries, the natural bumps and bruises that come over the course of a full season are always going to be there, and they get harder to play through in September.
But Counsell and his staff still have to take caution in how they handle some of the day-to-day stuff like what’s happened with Kyle Tucker and Pete Crow-Armstrong in the last week. Tucker is dealing with a balky calf and Crow-Armstrong fouled a ball off of his knee this weekend. Neither player is headed to the injured list at the moment, and Counsell said Sunday that for now it’s not in the team’s plans to shelve either one of them.
Cubs fans might be understandably leery of the idea of Tucker trying to play through a minor injury, given that it appears he attempted that with his hand earlier this season and has only just recently started hitting well again. Better to sit him for 10 games now than to risk losing his production in October.
On that front, however, it’s a careful line Counsell and the player have to walk together. Again, the Cubs are still playing for something at this point, so if a banged-up player is making progress and can return to action sooner than the 10-day minimum IL stay, perhaps it’s better to work around not having him for the time being.
“You make injury decisions every single day, right?” Counsell said. “And so we’ve just got to gather the information and make a good decision.”
As for whether the team handles injuries at all differently this time of year compared to, say, the middle of the season, Counsell said the approach is always to try and make the most informed decision possible, but some of the information taken into account is the reality that it’s almost mid-September and the Cubs don’t want to let a good playoff seeding slip away.
Tucker will not be in Monday’s lineup in Atlanta, Counsell said after Sunday’s game, but the news on Crow-Armstrong is somewhat more encouraging. More problematic, however, is the shoulder injury that took Daniel Palencia out of Sunday’s 6-3 loss to the Nationals. He entered the game ready to get a save with a 3-1 lead and instead served up two home runs, two other base hits, and a walk. All while failing to record an out. Palencia leaving the game with his right arm hanging by his side is more concerning in the long term, however.
The Cubs will have to navigate some part of the next three weeks without Palencia, and maybe all of them. One of Counsell’s greatest strengths might be managing a bullpen to success, so he could guide this group through the final stretch to the top wild card spot. Like Sunday proved, each of these last few games can end up mattering for a lot more than the final score.
