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Ok, let's pretend team X is facing team Y in an ALDS playoff series. Both teams are exactly the same in terms of talent. Team Y has home field advantage though. My question is does the game actually give team y the advantage in three of those five games?
Basically, my question here is does the game actually give the home field advantage team an advantage in a playoff series, or is the HFA just good for selling more tickets?
Well, the home team gets the advantage of the last at bat. I'm not sure if they get a "boost", so to speak, from the "crowd".
I don't think so.Quote:
Originally Posted by gosensgo101
I've found that it's very difficult to be more than a few games over .500 on the road, even with a fairly dominant team... So, I'd say there's some inherent advantage for the home team...
Ian
Historically home teams win about 53% of the time.
I don't think BM really takes that into account...but I don't think most of that extra three percent is simply 'friendly crowd' either. Being able to simply win in the last at bat, rather than having to defend your lead in the bottom of the ninth, can be useful.
When I put together a monster team, they'll do almost as well away as they do at home (both plenty above .500). The away record always seems to lag a couple of games or so behind the home record though.
Either way, there SHOULD be a very slight home field advantage besides batting in the bottom of the 9th. At least it should correlate with how you performed at home and away in the regular season. I know you should be able to win no matter what, but home field has to count for a least a little bit.
Why?Quote:
Originally Posted by gem779
I don't think that the playoffs should be affected by how the teams did at the regular season. A team playing better in 81 games at home than the 81 games on the road does not mean that theres something inherent to their park that makes them win more.
I can see HFA in football but not baseball.
There is a HFA in baseball. You know the park and the playing surface. I've never played baseball at a higher level than high school, but I have seen HFA there. At one school there is a metal grate drainage system in LF, visiting teams don't know it very well, so they are always aware of it and trying to stay away, the home kids know about it. At my home field we had a wind tunnel above our field because of where we were on a hill, so we were better at catching fly balls there. At the MLB level, the infields are all different heights or different types of grass. Some fileds have dirt all around the IF, some only around the bases. Some are real turf, some are astroturf. The amount of foul ground is all different. Houston has the hill in CF. The length of the warning track can be different. The mound can be slighly different in different ballparks. The batter's eye can be slightly different. Depending on time-of-day the shadows or sun could be different. The home team knows all about these so they are ready.
But how do you tell a program that?