Chicago Cubs: What’s left for the cream of the crop in the NL Central?

Chicago Cubs: Don’t ever sleep on St. Louis – ever

Speaking of those Redbirds, the Cubs currently hold a 5 1/2 game lead over the Cardinals, a very comfortable lead at this point in the season, but stranger things have happened.

It’s also possible the Cards stay relevant if they can hang on and wiggle their way into the Wild Card game (they’re currently a 1 1/2 game ahead of Colorado for the second berth). St. Louis has cooled, also going 6-4in their last 10 games, and 8-9 overall in the month.  Despite that, if the season ended today, they would play the Brewers in the Wild Card game at Miller Park and still have a mathematical, albeit small, chance to win the division.

The Cardinals finish their season with another game in Atlanta, (2-3 against the Braves so far this season) where they’ve already taken the first two games of the series. They will send left-hander  Jack Flaherty to the mound Wednesday against Touki Toussaint, then enjoy an off-day before they head home to St. Louis to face San Francisco.

The Giants are currently scheduled to go with left-hander Madison Bumgarner, right-hander Dereck Rodriguez and southpaw Andrew Suarez, so hopefully the Giants can do us a solid and win two or three in that series. The Redbirds will turn to John Gant, Adam Wainwright and Miles Mikolas. MadBum and Rodridguez are both really good and we can only hope that Bum helps us more than he did this past week against the Brewers.

After the Giants’ series, the Cards finish their last homestand of the year with that three-game set against the Brewers, where they’re scheduled to face Chase Anderson, left-hander Gio Gonzalez, and Zach Davies.  This particular series could end up helping to decide the division and the Wild Card spots, as the Cards and Brewers will be hurting each other, which only helps the Cubs.

If things haven’t been decided by the last series, it’ll be a great finish to the season at Wrigley, as the Cardinals (after an off-day) come to Chicago for the last series of the season.  I’m not going to postulate on the Cubs potential starters, because I’m hoping they will be setting up their rotation by that point.