Despite Cubs having no plans to add help in the form of rental players, Craig Counsell 'absolutely' believes they can still make a playoff push

(670 The Score) A day after Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer revealed the team’s focus in trade talks would be on 2025 and beyond and that the organization has no interest in adding short-term rental help to a club that has disappointed, manager Craig Counsell on Tuesday emphasized that nothing changes for him or his players.

Their focus remains on rallying to earn a playoff berth, and Counsell “absolutely” believes they can still accomplish that. Entering play Tuesday, the Cubs were 49-53 and trailed the NL Central-leading Brewers by nine games. The Cubs were also 3.5 games back of the final wild-card spot in the National League, with four teams sitting above them for that slot.

“Absolutely, absolutely, yeah,” Counsell said on the Parkins & Spiegel Show when asked if his club can still reach the playoffs without additions. “Look, the standings indicated we’re not a playoff team right now, and you can’t ignore that. But we still have 60 opportunities in front of us to change that. And that’s how you approach it.

“Nothing has changed for us … We look at it like we still have opportunity to get ourselves back into it and judge us at the end of the season.”

Counsell later got philosophical about what awaits the Cubs the final two-plus months of the season.

“You can’t run away from that,” Counsell said of the team’s 49-53 record. “You don’t get to change any of that … It doesn’t mean the future is written. We get to write what happens next by how we play. What’s happened has happened, and we can’t change it. So it is who we are. But we do have the future in front of us and we have games in front of us and we have opportunities in front of us.”