​Rewriting my perspective check: four teams currently have more wins than the Cubs, and two teams have as many wins as the Cubs. The Cubs are on pace to win around 90.4 games, while Fangraphs projects them to finish at 87 wins. On one hand, that projection feels like a bucket of cold water being dumped on the Cubs’ ambitions; on the other, many of us have watched this Cubs team closely enough to understand the factors that feed into that model. I’d still bet the over, but I’m fully aware of the reasons to temper that optimism.
What I find most telling about Fangraphs’ projection is that they place the Cubs as having the seventh-best record in baseball. They project the Yankees and Phillies, who are currently tied with the Cubs, to finish ahead of them. With that seventh-best mark, the Cubs earn the second Wild Card. In their framework, the Cubs finish three games ahead of the next closest team in the projections, across the league. So, in one sense, Fangraphs treats the top seven as a distinct tier—arguably there are sub-tiers within that top group, and I won’t dispute that. But the seven teams are clearly separated from the rest of the league.
Fangraphs uses a data-driven model to make these projections. Generally, I’d expect such projections to regress toward the middle on many variables. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which data modeling mirrors real life chaos so precisely that it becomes the actual outcome. If you picture the Fangraphs standings as if they were the final standings, the NL looks largely sane: five teams at 87 wins or more, with the Marlins sneaking in as the sixth NL team at 84 wins. That seems plausible enough, and the rest falls into place.
Now, entertain a hypothetical scenario in which the data model comes to life. The Rays win 90 games, narrowly beating the Yankees by one game to win the AL East. The Yankees endure some humbling losses, but still land as the top Wild Card with 89 wins. The Mariners win the West with 84 wins, narrowly ahead of the Rangers at 83 wins. The Central goes to the Guardians at 81-81. The White Sox—well, if the model weighs recent years heavily, they might sit lower, perhaps down to 79 wins despite having 48 in the bank at a .516 pace. The final playoff team could be the Red Sox with 80 wins. If 80 wins were truly a playoff threshold, you’d see almost no AL team trading meaningful players at the deadline; injuries and slumps would decide the outcomes, and every game would carry outsized importance. It would be chaotic, probably entertaining, and a bit maddening to follow.
Spoiler alert: all of these models eventually crumble in the face of real life. Yet the one consistent takeaway I take from them—flaws and all—is that the Cubs sit above the cut line for the better teams. You might not have anticipated a 500-word perspective check, but here we are. Flaws acknowledged, yes—the Cubs belong in the top tier, not as an expected champion but as a team that outruns the rest of the field. The lone caveat ties back to the White Sox, a subtle reminder tied to how the model operates for SEO purposes: the Cubs are kept in the upper echelon, in part because of how the system weighs recent history. In short, the Cubs are in that top group. They are who we thought they were—a cut above the field, though not necessarily championship kryptonite.