Cubs: No pulse, still alive

I can't believe I'm writing this, but the Cubs aren't done.

Sure, they've played terribly pretty much all season, and are 8 games behind the Cardinals. I know their run differential (+19) is only seventh-best in the league. And I've seen the National League wild card standings, which currently look like this:

..................W...L...GB
Colorado........71..54..-
San Francisco..67..58..4
Atlanta.........66..58..4.5
Florida..........65..59..5.5
Cubs............62..60..7.5

And yet, despite it all, the Cubs still have a chance. That's not to say that they're going to make the playoffs. But the window is still open.

I thought yesterday's series finale against the Dodgers was the biggest game of the season. Win, and the Cubs come home above .500. Lose and kiss the season goodbye.

How could one loss have been so demoralizing? I don't know -- I just write the shit, and that's how I felt. Anyway, with 40 games to play, the Cubs now need to go 28-12 -- a tidy .700 winning percentage -- to finish with 90 wins, a total that typically would put them in the playoffs.

But why in the world would I think the Cubs, at 2 games over .500 with three-fourths of the season gone, might play like world beaters in the fourth quarter? Well, have you looked at the schedule?

First of all, it is very home-heavy the rest of the way, with 24 games at Wrigley -- where they sport a .614 winning percentage -- versus just 16 on the road. But it's not just the location of the games, it's also the quality of the opponent that gives the Cubs a shot. Here are their opponents over the next 23 games, with number of games and location (home or away) in parentheses:

Nats (3H)
Mets (3H)
Astros (3H)
White Sox (1H)
Mets (3A)
Pirates (3A)
Reds (3H)
Brewers (4H)

For as crappy as the Cubs have played, they've been good at home and they've been very good against teams that are very bad (4-0 vs. Washington, 8-4 vs. Cincy, 9-5 vs. Houston, 6-2 vs. Pittsburgh). I have to think that for those 23 games, 17-6 is a remote yet somewhat realistic possibility. And at 79-66, they would be back in contention.

Then they'd need to go 11-6 the rest of the way to get to 90 wins. Could they do it against this slate?

Cards (3A)
Brewers (3A)
Giants (4A)
Pirates (4H)
D-Backs (3H)

No. Or at least Probably not. That 10-game trip that opens the stretch run is a killer, at least as difficult as their last 11 road games -- four against the Rockies and the Dodgers, three versus the Padres -- a span in which they won just three games. But they might not even need to get to 90 wins to make the playoffs (conversely, they may also need more, making this discussion largely moot) and they should roll in those last seven games at Wrigley against two teams playing out the string. Either way, the schedule before the trip gives the Cubs a legitimate shot to put themselves squarely in the wild card mix, and if they're back in contention in three weeks, that means they were not dead at this moment, regardless of the final outcome.

Unfortunately, while the schedule gives me some reasons for hope, the team has given me none. They have barely shown any signs of life all season, so there's no reason to think they'll start now. But there are two tiny slivers glinting in the late-summer sun:

1. The Cubs' best stretches of the season were May 1 to May 16, when they went 11-3, and July 11 to August 4 (21-10). Obviously, neither was close to the kind of sustained excellence they'd need to show now, but... Alright, so this is horrible, cherry-picking blogging at its worst, but let's just imagine those two stretches came back-to-back. That's a 32-13 record and a .711 winning percentage. Sure, it would have to be a statistical anomaly of enormous proportions to play their best ball of the season for such a huge chunk of games, but it's not quite impossible, either.

2. If the Cubs are ever going to do it -- and by that I mean actually win a championship -- wouldn't this have to be exactly how it would have to happen? If and when they end this drought, won't it have to be when everyone has completely counted them out? That's how these things end, with fucking miracles (see: 2004 Boston Red Sox). So while this might not the year it happens, when it does it's going to be under circumstances that are just as unlikely.

Yes, the club has shown nothing to this point, but that doesn't matter going forward. While it is an indicator that they won't take an advantage of the opportunity, it does not mean that the opportunity doesn't exist. These next 40 games are a chance to re-start the season, to channel the team they had in the 2008 regular season and play like the National League's best. Will it happen? I doubt it.

But it could.