The Cubs’ magic number for the seventh pick has dropped to one

I love magic numbers. It’s one of my favorite silly baseball tricks to follow in the last few weeks of the season. The number of tail team wins and losses combined that earns your team a playoff berth. It’s fun to follow – “Dang, the Cubs lost, but their magic count has dropped by one anyway!” “Oh man, it’s a double fall day! “Damn, the magic number is always 11.” And so on.

Well, we’re not getting it this year. The Cubs weren’t even close to leading the Division or the Wild Card race at a time when we would have started talking about Magic Numbers. We have been broken into!

So let me offer you that today you can still sort of think of a magic number if you will.

Thanks to their most recent victories, the Rockies and Royals have made it impossible to overtake the Cubs in the reverse standings. Thus, the Cubs floor is now the 8th pick in the 2022 draft (and the associated bonus pool). The cap is also roughly capped because of the Cubs’ victory last night against the Pirates. If they had lost, there would have been an outside chance to pass the Marlins for the 6th pick. But now the only coup is that the Cubs lose all remaining games and the Marlins win all remaining games. The Marlins have three against the Phillies after a game against the Mets today. I don’t see them winning (and I don’t necessarily see the Cubs losing either).

So if the eight is the floor and the seven is basically the ceiling, then what has to happen? Well, that’s where the magic number comes in. As it stands, and thanks to the tiebreaker, the Twins would have to lose and the Cubs would have to win for the Twins to overtake the Cubs. It is the equivalent of a magic number of one.

One more loss for the Cubs, * OR * one more victory for the Twins, and voila. Wouldn’t it be nice if that happened today so that we could just encourage the Cubs to beat the Cardinals in the final series, without any cognitive dissonance?

So either lose to the Pirates tonight, the Cubs. Or Twins, beat the Tigers one more time. (After that the Twins get the Royals, so I think they will * probably * win at least one more in any case. But better to be safe than sorry!)