Cubs keeping a foot on both sides of the line ahead of the MLB trade deadline

Winners of five consecutive games, the Chicago Cubs are hoping to close out the first half on a season-changing hot streak. After sweeping the Baltimore Orioles this week, Kyle Hendricks led the team to a series-opening win over the rival St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night. Now, tasked with three games over the next two days, the Cubs are looking to flip the script on what's been an disappointing season to this point.

In an appearance on 670 The Score Friday, Cubs president Jed Hoyer touched on a variety of topics, including his team's approach to the rapidly approaching deadline. For now, the front office is preparing for both outcomes: selling in an effort to re-tool for 2025 and buying in hopes of returning to the postseason.

Hoyer admitted his team has virtually no margin for error at this point and that the next couple of weeks are critical. Even after running off five consecutive wins this week, Fangraphs has the Cubs' postseason odds at just 14.6 percent.

It's all about perspective when talking about this 2024 Cubs team

There are two ways to look at that. Glass half-full? That's more than a 3x improvement over the team's low-water mark on July 3, when those odds sat at 4.9 percent. Glass half-empty? On May 10, Chicago had a 71.8 percent chance of punching its October ticket.

This season feels like we're living a real-world Groundhog Day, with the team almost perfectly replicating its first-half performance from last year. Of course, the Cubs made a summer run before running out of steam in a historically-bad late September collapse. Hoyer is hoping for that same sort of turnaround, albeit with a different result, in 2024.

I certainly believed in this team on Opening Day. I certainly believed in this team on May 1. And I still do. But obviously, we’ve put ourselves in a position that’s difficult. Now we have to dig out from under that position a little bit, and that can be difficult. I think we can do it. But we certainly haven’t made our path as simple as possible.

Chicago heads into Saturday's doubleheader just three games out of the third and final wild card spot in the National League but, thanks to the league's expanded postseason format, we have to keep in mind this is still a team thats three games below .500. Did this week give us that long-awaited glimpse of who this team really is? Or were the last two months a true indication of what we can realistically expect from this roster that lacks major star power?

Those are the questions Hoyer and his front office are weighing leading up to the MLB trade deadline. The team controls its own destiny - and it'll be all eyes on this group in the weeks to come as we all anxiously eye that July 30 date on the calendar.