Column: Why this Chicago Cubs season can’t be considered a success if they miss the playoffs — even with their midseason turnaround

The Chicago Cubs are a big-market team with enough resources to outspend their division rivals every season.

They did just that last offseason, bringing in Dansby Swanson, Cody Bellinger, Jameson Taillon, Trey Mancini, Michael Fulmer and others in a $300 million spending spree to try to get into the postseason. They talked about it in spring training, and when the team took off in July, it seemed like President Jed Hoyer’s grand plan was working to a T.

Not only did it look like the Cubs would make it to the postseason, but they were doing so with youngsters such as Christopher Morel, Adbert Alzolay, Javier Assad, Jordan Wicks and Miguel Amaya contributing. The addition of top prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong in mid-September was icing on the cake.

Now the Cubs are in for a major fight, having blown a chance to catch the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers with a 2-8 road trip. Entering Wednesday’s games they have a half-game lead over the Miami Marlins for the third National League wild-card spot.

Yet some have suggested this season already is a success no matter how it ends — that the turnaround from 10 games under .500 in late June to wild-card contender with 12 games remaining is proof the Cubs made all the right moves and kept us entertained all season. It’s almost as though the Cubs are the little engine that could instead of a team that should contend every year.

That kind of thinking should be reserved for the Kansas City Royals and Cincinnati Reds of the baseball world. After climbing into position for a postseason berth, the Cubs desperately need to get in to consider the season a success, no matter how they got here.

Right, Jed?

“I feel like that’s a question for the end of the season,” Hoyer said Tuesday. “It’s late, but I don’t think it’s the right time to answer stuff like that. I feel like we’ve all really enjoyed so many aspects of this season. Obviously as much as we’ve enjoyed them is as much as we’re disappointed in the last 10 days.

“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster of a season with the early season, then the May-June swoon, and then great baseball for like three months and then this struggle. It’s been an up-and-down, roller-coaster season with a lot of real positives, but I’m not ready to have any kind of perspective. I just want to win four series in a row. That’s how I’m looking at it.”

If the Cubs do that, they would go no worse than 8-4 over the last 12 games, which might be enough to sneak into a wild-card spot. But if they don’t, they would have to consider this a blown opportunity. “Every season is sacred,” former Cubs President Theo Epstein said before a 101-loss season in 2012, the first year of the rebuild.

No one believed him because Epstein obviously was tanking the season for a chance to build a better future. He had the gravitas to get away with tanking for a few seasons and the trust of Cubs fans who believed in his plan.

Hoyer, who served as Epstein’s wing man throughout the process that led to the 2016 World Series championship, had many more skeptics when he embarked on his own semi-rebuild, starting with the trade of Yu Darvish before the 2021 season and continuing with the great sell-off that summer. He wasn’t as good a salesman as Epstein, so the jury was still out in the first half of 2023 as to whether his “intelligent spending” plan would pan out.

Hoyer deserves credit for making the Cubs contenders again and for taking the risk to keep Bellinger at the trade deadline when he could’ve gotten a few top prospects and solidified their chances of contending next year. But if the Cubs fall short of the playoffs, some of the moves he didn’t make at the deadline to improve the bullpen, rotation and bench could be the reason.

Manager David Ross, whose every move has been scrutinized with the intensity of songs about Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriends, has been forced to make do with veteran pitchers in different spots, young players with virtually no experience and many others in their first pennant race.

With Jeimer Candelario and Nick Madrigal out with injuries, the Cubs on Tuesday called up Jared Young from Triple-A Iowa to join fellow rookies Crow-Armstrong and Alexander Canario. Rookies Daniel Palencia and Luke Little are part of the bullpen that lost Alzolay and Fulmer to injuries. Marcus Stroman is back on the roster as a reliever along with fellow former starter Drew Smyly. Brad Boxberger is back but hasn’t returned to Ross’ circle of trust.

Ross rearranged his rotation, moving Taillon back to the weekend behind Justin Steele and Kyle Hendricks, his only consistent starters during the long turnaround.

“Lining up our best pitching for the rest of the season and the postseason,” Ross said, confirming Steele is on schedule for Game 162 in Milwaukee.

On Tuesday he put Morel at third base, where he has played only three times this season because of the Cubs’ lack of faith in his defense, and inserted Canario in the designated hitter role for his first career start — and hit a grand slam for his first MLB home run — after languishing on the bench with only one at-bat since his call-up on Sept. 1.

The Cubs players know they can’t continue to play like they have the last 10 games. But they also don’t believe they’re collapsing in living color.

It’s an inner confidence they used to dig themselves out of that big hole in June.

“I don’t think we need a total change of direction,” second baseman Nico Hoerner said. “There’s time left. We’re not trailing (for the final wild-card spot). Just continue to play.

“I don’t think we need anything abnormal or some freakish turnaround or things like that. We’re going to continue on with what we’ve done for the last 2 1/2 months and the whole season, really.”

There’s still time for the Cubs roller coaster to go back up, and no one is panicking yet.

But the time for talking is over. Let’s see what this bunch is made of.