7.42% - So you’re saying there’s a chance?

Today’s Baseball Prospectus’s playoff odds gives the Cubs a 7.42% chance at making the playoffs this year and a 5.58% chance at winning the NL Central. After a day when nothing went wrong for the Cubs (a.k.a., an off day), I found myself wondering what exactly has to happen for the Cubs to reverse choke this season. The Cubs are sitting 8 games behind the Cards entering play today, but only 6 in the loss column. The Cards are currently on pace for around 92 or 93 wins (BPro’s average puts them at 92), so for this exercise let’s assume the Cubs have to win 94. There are 40 games left, which means the Cubs would have to go 32-8 to finish with 94 wins, or 31-9 to tie at 93 wins. Let’s assume the latter, leaving the Cubs and Cards to play a make up game, time and place TBD. In this scenario, the Cubs pretty much have to sweep the Cards in the 3 game set 9/18-20 in St. Louis. This gives the Cubs 37 other games to make up 5 games. The Cubs have a ver...