The Chicago Cubs recently lost an eight-game winning streak. But that streak may have been the force that gets them into the playoffs. Without it, they would have been sellers at the trade deadline and bound for another losing season.

Ahead of the deadline, they told teams that they would not trade pending free agent Cody Bellinger and ended up keeping Marcus Stroman despite an inability to reach a contract extension agreement. They traded for Washington Nationals third baseman Jeimer Candelario, landed relief pitcher Jose Cuas from the Kansas City Royals and made a small move with the Tampa Bay Rays involving minor-league prospects. They also DFA'd Trey Mancini to make room for Candelario.

Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said after the trade deadline that the team was not far away from being sellers, according to Jesse Rogers of ESPN.

“There was a period where it looked like we were going to be sellers,” Hoyer said after the deadline, via ESPN. “We were seven games under .500, playing the Nationals and down 3-0, about to go eight under, and we ended up scoring 17 that night and sort of didn't look back for a while. That wasn't very long ago.”

The Cubs' adding Candelario — who spent the first season and a half of his career in Chicago — to their lineup paid off immediately when he tallied four hits and scored twice in a 20-9 demolition of the Cincinnati Reds. Cuas should be a solid addition to Chicago's bullpen despite owning an ERA of 4.54, as he strikes out 27.1 percent of batters.

Hoyer said, per ESPN, that opposing teams “were asking about players we were going to have available. It was interesting, more and more as we got into it deep last week, teams were calling, saying, ‘You're not selling. You guys are good, you guys are going to buy.' People stopped taking us seriously as a seller.”

The Cubs are still multiple games back from a Wild Card spot, trailing the San Francisco Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers, Arizona Diamondbacks and Miami Marlins. They may not make it back to the playoffs this season but they have signaled that they’re ready to start going for it again.