So are the Chicago Cubs as bad on the road as their record suggests, or is it something else? Could it just be bad luck? Sabermetricians measure a team’s performance a lot of ways, but the run differential is almost the Holy Grail of metrics. Nothing aggregates more effectively and accurately the performance of a team than run differential.
The Cubs run differential after Thursday’s game is 628 runs scored vs. 554 runs allowed for a plus 74 run differential. And that equates to a Pythagorean Win-Loss of 70-56. As of Thursday, they are 69-56, so right on the mark.