Pythagoras
Dale Sveum is not a mathematician.  In fact, he doesn’t seem to be much of a thinker.  So it’s unlikely that he understands that his fourth place Cubs really shouldn’t be bad.  They ought to be mediocre.

Woo!  Cubs fever.  Catch it.  And die.

You may know Pythagoras as a greek philosopher and mathematician from the sixth century BC (before Cubs), who developed a theorem about right triangles where a squared plus b squared equals c squared, then modestly named it after himself.

But Pythagoras was also the first sabermetrician, and he invented a wins expectancy chart based on a teams runs scored and runs allowed.  The Cubs, at this writing are 22-30, but according to Pythagoras they should be 27-25.  That’s right, our merry band of misfits should have a winning record.  Any team giving regular at bats to Luis Valbuena and Nate Schierholtz can’t help but be terrific.

The Cubs are the only team in baseball who have scored more runs than they’ve allowed that does not have a winning record.

They lead the NL in doubles, are third in homers, third in extra base hits, third in slugging and fifth in stolen bases.

They are seventh in ERA, but have allowed the fewest hits in the league.  Their problems are that they walk too many guys (fifth most), and don’t walk themselves (dead last).  They’re not last in on base average, but they can see it from where they are (fourth worst).

So what does this all mean?  Over the course of the season they should get closer and closer to .500, and dare we expect they might get over it?

Let’s not get carried away.  They don’t beat good teams.  They are 5-17 combined against Pissburgh, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Atlanta.  They’ve only played St. Louis twice.  They did play well against the Rangers and Nationals, but they can’t beat the Brewers (1-4) and everybody else hammers the pathetic, last place Brewers.

We know why they lose.  They don’t consistently get runners on, the bullpen until very recently was atrocious and they are tied for second in errors and second in worst fielding percentage.

They are, however, strangely fun to watch.  They just seem like a really good bunch of guys who play hard.  Good starting pitching makes teams appear more competitive and competent than maybe they really are.

What we’re not so sure about though, is if Dale Sveum is a complete dumb shit or not.  I tend to lean in the direction of him being a full-blown idiot.  Baseball managers don’t need to be Rhodes Scholars, but even for this historically genius bunch, Dale seems a bit slow.  He says really stupid stuff like that Luis Valbuena was on pace for 30 homers when he would have needed an extra 50 games or so for that to be true.  That Travis Wood is the best pitcher in baseball.  He mangles the English language on a regular basis.  Not that my beloved Lou Piniella didn’t do that, but nobody with a brain doubted that Lou knew his baseball stuff.

The Cubs have been so talent bereft the last two years there’s no real way to knowing if Dale is doing a great job, a lousy job or somewhere in between.  I just can’t shake the idea that he was hired to get the Cubs through the rebuilding years only to be replaced by a real manager.

Or, maybe Pythagoras is just full of shit.