by lakerevolution » Thu Aug 08, 2019 4:38 pm
Jesse Rogers - ESPN Staff Writer
"Going into the four-game series with the Cincinnati Reds that begins Thursday, Chicago hasn't won a road series since May 17-19 and is the only team in baseball that owns such a dubious streak during that time. That's a span of 10 road series in which the Cubs have either split or lost. It has led to a 21-33 road mark -- compared to their stellar 41-19 record at home. Wrigley Field is the reason the Cubs are in first place. The road could be the reason they drop out of it.
"To be two different teams, completely, is very awkward," Joe Maddon said recently. "I don't have any solid answers. The process has been the same. The work has been the same. Their attitude has been good."
"It's a story now," first baseman Anthony Rizzo said. "We have to answer questions about it because we haven't played well on the road."
Rizzo is just one of many good players on the team who has pronounced home and road splits. He's hitting .322 at Wrigley Field and .244 away from the friendly confines. Pitcher Kyle Hendricks has a 4.32 road ERA compared to a 1.98 mark at home. The list goes on and on.
The Cubs, who finished 5-1 on their just completed homestand, wouldn't be the first or second or even third team to win a division despite having a road record of 10 games under .500 or worse. In fact, the 1987 World Series champion Minnesota Twins went 29-52 on the road -- and won their division.
"I have no explanation for how a good team plays well at home and then goes on the road and struggles as badly as we did in '87 -- and as bad as we're struggling this year on the road," Cubs assistant general manager Randy Bush, who played on that Twins team, said this week. "We're going on the road here, and I fully expect us to have a great road trip, and I know that our players have been talking about going out and having a great road trip. It's on their mind."
The 1987 Twins made the postseason thanks to a 56-25 home record. The Cubs are on pace to become the fourth team since divisional play was introduced in 1969 to win their division despite being 10-plus games under .500 on the road. The 2006 Cardinals and 2008 White Sox also won division crowns with subpar road records.
"I remember saying we should wear our home uniforms on the road," said Ozzie Guillen, the White Sox manager in '08. His team was 35-46 on the road that season but won the AL Central by a game over Minnesota. You might think a Type-A personality such as Guillen would try anything -- besides changing uniforms -- to alter his team's fortunes on the road, but he said staying the course is actually what's best.
"When you do that, you panic," Guillen said of changing the road routine. "And your players see that. You have to stay the same no matter what it is, good or bad."
Keeping even-keeled is one of Maddon's strengths, so the Cubs are covered there. Like Bush's Twins, Maddon's team simply keeps believing that the next trip will be a winning one.
"We had a passionate home crowd, and we thrived off of that," Bush said. "And we played really well. Then we would go on the road and have great expectations -- every time -- and every time we would really struggle. And kept repeating it over and over."
What Bush describes sounds eerily similar to the Cubs this season. Homestand after homestand, they produce big wins and victorious series, averaging 5.62 runs per game at Wrigley. But all that excitement gets flushed down the toilet once the team hits the road, where the Cubs average 4.96 runs per game. The results on the mound are even more pronounced: 3.83 given up per game at home, 4.89 on the road.
"There was always that feeling that we would win that ballgame at home," 2006 Cardinals outfielder Brad Thompson said. "We just knew it was going to happen. For some reason on the road, we didn't have that."
Thompson points to injuries to major stars as one reason those Cards -- who were 34-47 on the road -- kept coming up short away from home. But those players also missed time at Busch Stadium. Perhaps it comes down to a team's flaws being more of an issue on the road, where the challenges are a little greater. In the Cubs' case, the team isn't as deep as it once was. It's possible that lack of depth is showing up more away from home, which then leads to players pressing. At some point, the struggles become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"We get here [home], and we relax," Javier Baez said earlier in the week. "We let the game come to us. With the record we have, we go on the road, and there's pressure to win the game before it's over."