“I’ve never seen anything like this. I have no answers. I really don’t.” - Steve Cishek to ESPNChicago.com Jesse Rogers on Twitter regarding the Cubs road record.
Unfortunately, for many Cubs fans of a certain generation, we've seen this way too many times in our lives. Usually the bad road record was accompanied with an equally bad home record and our hopes and dreams were already shattered by the end of July.
The 2019 version of our beloved are a horse of a different color. They can't lose at home and they can't win on the road. Sadly, baseball still makes them play 81 games away from the friendly confines and somebody needs to figure out why they can't win away games.
Luckily for the Cubs, I know why, and am happy to share with them the two reasons they keep losing on the road. I have felt these were the reasons all season but was too lazy until this morning to actually go and do some research to be sure.
For those that are regular readers, and all of you are, you know that I rarely let the facts get in the way of my feelings, unless they actually back up what I am feeling, then I am happy to use them. So, just for you, I put on a full pot of coffee, pulled up Baseball-Reference.com,
and did some calculating and here are the two reasons for you to share with loved ones.
The Cubs are 19-31 so far, through Saturday July 27th, on the road in 2019. A miserable record to be sure and one that will not win you a division or world series. However, when they score five or more runs in a game they are 14-10 on the road. This is obviously great and wouldn't it be nice to pound out 5+ runs every road game.
Unfortunately, when they score less than five runs they are a horrible 5-21! It is almost ridiculous to have that much of a discrepancy as you would think that the pitching could win a game once in a while on the road. Clearly this shows how important it is for this team to score runs away from home in order to give themselves a chance to win.
If they were just .500 on the road, they would be running away with the division right now. Things would be on cruise control, and the team needs would be quite different for Theo and Jed at the trade deadline. But, shoulda, woulda, coulda, doesn't win you games.
I said there were two reasons, and the second one is going to be both controversial, and somewhat outside the box.
The other reason for the Cubs road woes are the blue uniforms.
No, I have not lost control of my senses, any more than usual, anyway.
When they wear these abominations, besides looking like they should be playing 16" softball at Cal Park, they are 10-20. That is a whopping ten games under .500 and reason enough to burn them forever. I have been saying this for years now that these uniforms have bad juju surrounding them and I don't care that they won the world series wearing them, they almost lost it too that night.
Dan, you're screaming, that means they are still under .500 even wearing the gray ones.
True, but their record with these is only 9-11 and being around .500 on the road is always the goal for teams. I'll take two games under .500 any day. I will also suggest that if they want to wear a third uniform on the road, bag the blue, and go back to last year when they had these beauties.
Gray, sweet, and most importantly, not blue.
The facts are the facts here. When wearing blue and scoring less than five runs a game they have no chance to win. Considering they still have 31 games to play on the road what harm would it be to just wear the grays?
They have four huge games left on this trip, home for a shorty stand, and back on the road for ten key games. Have someone on the clubhouse staff lose the blue tops for a month or so and let's see what happens. If I'm right they stop wearing them forever and if I'm wrong, then we'll discuss at that time other solutions.
In the meantime, keep wearing the best looking uniforms in baseball when at home.
