With season all but over, Cubs face a gauntlet prior to MLB Trade Deadline

The Major League Baseball calendar has flipped to July, with the MLB Trade Deadline at the end of the month. The Chicago Cubs are five games out of the final Wild Card spot in the National League, trailing the Milwaukee Brewers by 11.5 games for first place in the National League Central.

Everything about the Cubs' 2024 season has been disappointing, with all signs suggesting that they will be sellers at the deadline.

To that end, CBS Sports ran down a list of six bubble teams that need to prove something over the next three weeks to avoid being sellers at the deadline. Of course, the Cubs were among the six teams listed.

President of baseball ops Jed Hoyer isn't exactly the most aggressive operator when it comes to positioning his roster to contend, and the team is giving him plenty of excuses to do nothing or even sell leading up to the deadline. They need to go on a run quickly.

The problem with that statement of the Cubs needing to prove something is that the team just concluded a 25-game stretch where they had an opportunity to make up ground and only won 10 games during that period.

Cubs wasted an opportunity to get back into contention.

Of the 23 games the Cubs have before the deadline at the end of the month, 16 are against the Philadelphia Phillies, Baltimore Orioles, St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Kansas City Royals. For a Cubs team that needs a miracle winning streak to save the season, their schedule would seem to suggest that a repeat of the 2023 turnaround is not happening in 2024.

Cubs fans may not want to admit it, but it's no longer a question of whether the Cubs will be selling; it's a matter of who they will be selling to.