How The Cubs Won The NL Wild-Card Game

Things look bleak for the Pirates, with a 2.9 percent win probability as of the top of the eighth. But remember last year’s Royals! They fought back to beat the A’s in the wild-card game last year after falling to a 2.9 percent win probability in the seventh.

According to win probability added, the Pirates were one of the clutchest hitting teams in the National League during the regular season. Yup.

The Chicago Cubs are on the brink of making the divisional series, carrying a 4-0 lead into the eighth inning. Pretty good for a franchise widely known as exceptionally futile in the postseason. That’s what happens when you don’t win a World Series in more than 100 years. More advanced statistics back up the idea that the Cubs are especially unsuccessful. There’s a strong correlation between a franchise’s lifetime win-loss percentage and its number of World Series wins. By that correlation, the Cubs register as a significant outlier, having compiled a .512 winning percentage (sixth-best in MLB history) in their 140-plus years of existence, but only a couple of World Series wins. Naively, we would have expected the Cubs to have won something like 20 championships, based on their strong win percentage.