April 27, 2014

Road Woes

The Cubs fell to the Brewers 5-3 on Saturday, lowering their road record to an abysmal 2-8, and dropping the team 10 1/2 games out of first place. While that’s not an impossible distance to overcome this early in the season, the Cubs offense shows no signs of being able to muster the runs to make such a run possible.

At home, the offense is okay, with a .251/.327/.383 slash line. Not the 1927 Yankees, but they are scoring over four runs a game. They really should be closer to .500 at home, with 59 runs scored and 60 allowed. Their 5-8 record playing at Wrigley Field could be excused by bad luck.

On the road, the offense’s slash line drops to .204/.253/.304. A team would have a tough time keeping a great defensive shortstop or catcher on the team with those kinds of numbers. In their ten road games they scored 25 runs. Note the pitching staff owns a 3.90 ERA on the road versus 4.00 at home, so the Cubs opponents score at about the same rate regardless of their location.

Starlin Castro, Anthony Rizzo, and Nate Schierholtz have been the biggest offenders away from Wrigley, although plenty of part time players are not contributing, either.

Part of the problem is strikeouts. The Cubs batters strikeout 27% of the time at home, 29% of the time on the road. They also post a .267 BABIP on the road versus .292 overall. It seems that for some reason, the team is not seeing the ball well on the road. I’m not sure why. Pittsburgh, St. Louis, New York, and Milwaukee are all rather new stadiums with good batter eyes in the outfield.

Given the level of pitching so far, a modest improvement in offense would put the Cubs closer to .500. If the team can figure out what’s going on away from Wrigley Field, they’ll move a long way toward that level.

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