Panic time at Wrigley Field?

Not yet perhaps, but the Chicago Cubs’ struggles in September have fans on edge entering the final regular-season series at Wrigley Field.

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Manager David Ross noted after Thursday’s loss to Pittsburgh that the Pirates were not a team of “our caliber.” If that’s the case, neither are the 96-loss Colorado Rockies, their weekend opponent. The Rockies sent Noah Davis, a pitcher with a 9.58 ERA, against the Cubs in Friday’s opener.

The Cubs were expected to beat teams like the Pirates and Rockies in September, but have instead lost four of their last six games to the two bottom feeders over the last week and a half.

Every game is big from now on.

“Expectations are one thing, but they’ve all felt big,” Ross said Friday morning. “They felt big in Arizona, right? The Pirates, we need to beat those teams and we didn’t. We start dwindling down (in games) and you’re in a race and there’s a bunch of teams around you. That’s the exciting part.

“This is an opportunity we’d all sign up for in spring training, right? We’ve got nine games left and we’re in the hunt for the playoffs. We’re right there. We’d all sign up for that.

“This is a really positive moment. It feels maybe a little bit negative to everybody because of how we’ve gone about the last 10-15 days, but we’re still in position to have a chance to get in the playoffs. This is a good thing. We’re in a good spot to make the playoffs. We’ve just got to do it.”

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The Cubs found themselves tied with the Miami Marlins for the third National League wild-card spot Friday, which actually meant they were one game back since the Marlins hold the tiebreaker. The Cubs are 1/2 game ahead of the Reds, but Cincinnati holds the tiebreaker.

The Cubs entered Friday having lost 10 of their last 13 games since sweeping the San Francisco Giants on Sept. 6, a plunge that has seen them fall from 1 1/2 games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers to 8 games back. The Brewers should clinch this weekend.

That would mean the Cubs’ only chance to get into the postseason is via the wild card — and with a season-ending six-game road trip to Atlanta and Milwaukee, the odds aren’t in their favor.

On the bright side, the Cubs are 37-27 since the All-Star break, a stat Marquee Sports Network found relevant enough to use in a chyron Thursday during a tape of Dansby Swanson’s postgame interview with reporters. The Marquee postgame show focused on a bad call on Seiya Suzuki’s strikeout in the ninth inning instead of the fielding mistakes and poor relief pitching that led to the 8-6 loss.

It’s good to own the team and TV network providing the narrative for a team that’s seemingly in free fall. While NBC Sports Chicago continues to deal out harsh criticism of the White Sox team on its pre- and postgame shows, Marquee pretends everything is fine with the Cubs.

That was one of the worries when the Cubs decided to start their own network. Would the coverage be objective, or just pro-Cub? It’s easy to cover a team when things are going well. But it’s times like these when Marquee can show it truly understands what Cubs fans are going through.

Wait ‘till next year?