Achilles tendency

By this point, everyone knows about the Cubs' road issues. And while they obviously could hit better in road games, to some degree they've just been really, really unlucky.

Consider the following. The Cubs have now played 16 series each at home and on the road. In the 16 home series, they're 13-3. In the 16 road series, they're 4-9-3. All is not totally lost, however; the Cubs started by going 1-6-1 in road series; they're 3-3-2 since, even after the series loss to Houston. What's more, the Cubs have still outscored their opponents on the road, 210 runs to 206.

The Cubs are 15-15 in one-run games this year. 16 of those games were on the road; the Cubs are 6-10 in those games, while going 9-5 in one-run home games. Some of that is just bad luck and minor park advantage when the Cubs are on the road. More importantly, that's fully a third of the Cubs' 49 road games that were decided by a single run. That 6-10 record could even out in the second half - if the Cubs are playing a lot of close ones on the road, it's likely that they'll win some of them at some point. (What's more, in 12 more road games, the game was decided by just two runs - the Cubs are 3-9 in those games. This, too, is likely to move closer to even as long as the Cubs are really a good team.)

The Cubs also have a nasty tendency for outscoring a team yet losing the series. This has happened at home and on the road, but of course it's happened much more on the road, since the Cubs only have three home series losses. At Washington from April 25-27, the Cubs outscored the Nationals 10-7 but lost two of three. In their very next series, at home against Milwaukee, the Cubs outscored the Brewers 29-19 - thanks to a 19-5 thumping in the middle game - but lost two of three. In their next series after that, they outscored the Cardinals 15-13 in St. Louis, but lost two of three. For the season, the Cubs have six series in which they outscored the opposition but still lost two of the three games, including this past series at Houston; five of those series have come on the road. This is the sort of thing that probably can't hold up over a full season, although you never know.

So what's the problem? The obvious answer is consistency. It's not that the Cubs can't score runs on the road or that their pitchers are suddenly much worse, since the Cubs have outscored the opposition for the year - by a slim margin, to be sure, but it's a positive margin and thus not indicative of a road record that's seven games under .500. Saying that the Cubs need to be more consistent on the road is more than a bit trite, to be sure, but it really seems like the answer. The Cubs have allowed just five more runs on the road in the same number of games; they're not exactly getting pounded. Really, it seems like a few more runs ought to do it. The only question now is can the Cubs, with probably the toughest part of the schedule coming up and with some players possibly in danger of wearing down a bit over the long season, actually find more runs on the road?

I guess we'll see.