Why are you focusing on the playoffs instead of the entire season?
As I already pointed out, *home advantage applies both to good teams and bad teams. *Even bad teams have a higher winning percentage at home than they do on the road. How can they be the better team more often at home, but the worse team more often on the road?
You really are ignoring most of the available evidence to continue to make your argument.
This can be true in the LCS, if the Wild Card team wins the DS.
It is never true in the Division Series, though, because the winner of the Wild Card game faces the team with the best record.
No, I’m not. It’s just evidence that supports my argument, but I don’t really need that quantitative evidence. The logic itself will prove me right.
There is less of an advantage when playing within the league. Teams face each other more frequently, with similar rules (DH or no DH). The advantage is reduced. If an advantage exists at all, it is in the World Series. Incidentally, someone asked why I’m only focusing on the WS – it’s because that’s where the advantage (assuming there is such a thing in sports) is almost certainly most pronounced.
There’s a reason I’m ignoring it.
I think much of the conversation about home field “advantage” in sports is much ado about nothing. However, if it exists, then it exists in a sport like baseball. And the advantage – again if it truly exists at all – is even more significant in the World Series, where teams play in parks they’re not familiar with. Does home field advantage guarantee victory? No. That’s why you can pull out all the stats you want and it won’t convince me I’m wrong. It’s simple logic. If you’re playing a game of hide and seek in your own house, you know the hiding places that your “seeker” doesn’t. Play the game in his house and then it really depends on how good you are at finding the hiding places.
I do believe that there is a home field advantage in baseball, especially as teams go deeper into the playoffs and play in opposing parks that are outside their division. That advantage isn’t overwhelming, though. If you’ve got a pitcher who can locate pitches well and overpower a lineup, then it doesn’t matter if you’re playing in a park that’s 300 down the lines or 350. An advantage is just that - an advantage. It’s not a guarantee that a team will win a particular game. That’s why I say quantitative data alone doesn’t really tell the story.
You’re the one who seems to think there’s something magical about playoffs. As has been mentioned several times, teams overall win more home games - more so in basketball and football, less so in baseball. Please explain how this does not demonstrate a home field/court advantage.
Honestly, I don’t even know what your point is anymore.
It could be that in the regular season traveling is a bigger drag on players in the NBA than in MLB. That would stand to reason given that basketball is a much more physically demanding sport than baseball. I really don’t know and don’t care.
You tell me-- what is it about NBA home games that gives teams an advantage that is not seen in a baseball home game? “Adrenaline”? Don’t both teams have adrenaline?
What’s magical about the playoffs is that, the deeper you go into the playoffs, the less familiar the two opposing teams are with each other and with the opposing ballpark. Again, a home field advantage doesn’t guarantee a victory - it just means that the home team knows things about the park the visitors don’t.
I’m sorry, as long as you continue to ignore statistics and actual win patterns within the leagues, it isn’t worth trying to argue with you. Your gut feel is worthless to me, and that seems to be all you have.
Well, I can’t argue with this!
Well, then, if you’re not interested in facts it’s pointless discussing this with you. You can hold whatever opinion you want, but your opinion is contradicted by the factual evidence.
Apparently, the source of your opinions.
Yep, the stats are pretty clear on this. Weird that anyone would so vehemently continue to argue the point.
And this is why they shouldn’t have off days during the World Series…
So, what do you think about the DH?
Ulf the Unwashed:
Not to mention series like last year, when the Royals won in 5 games…three of which were played at Citi Field.
(Then again, they had a winning percentage of 1.000 in the games they played at home, and a winning percentage of .667 in the games they played on the road, so maybe that means the home field did mean something? I don’t know. Of course, one small series proves nothing meaningful.)
Do we have any SABR members here? They should have access to good data on home field advantage.
All of a sudden, asahi’s overreactions to the various polls in Elections makes perfect sense.
Dude, you need to go take a class on statistics, esp. on statistical significance.
Which constitutes home “field” advantage.
That is simply preposterous.
I realize you’ve already said you don’t care about facts, but the teams are not made up of naïfs who’ve only ever played for their teams and never anywhere else.
[QUOTE=asahi]
It’s simple logic.
[/QUOTE]
No it obviously is not. The characteristics of a team sport are not explained by simple logical deduction. They are explained by an extraordinarily complicated set of interrelated stochastic systems including matters pertaining to physiology, psychology, physics, biology, and economics.
Can we keep election-year politics out of this, please?
Let’s look at somereal MLB rivalries where home field advantage should manifest itself the most. These are long-term rivalries with thousands of games in the database.
Cardinals vs. Cubs
For games in St. Louis, Cardinals win 53.7%
For games in Chicago, Cubs win 56%
Yankees vs. Red Sox
Yankees win at home 58.4%
Red Sox win at home 49.2%
Dodgers vs. Giants
Dodgers win at home 52.6%
Giants win at home 54%
Tigers vs. White Sox
Detroit at home 54%
Chisox at home 51.9%
Over the long, long time (all of these matchups are more than a century) there might be a home field advantage, but in a seven-game series there are too many other variables.
I used to be a member of SABR, but there isn’t all that much info. We generally got articles publicized in the Baseball Research Journal or The National Pastime (which was more story based). But I don’t recall other hidden stats we had access too. To be honest, Fangraphs would likely be better. In the BRJ, there is this 1989 article, which is pleading for Home Field Advantage to be given to the better regular season team, since they tend to win anyways:
And then in 2003, the BRJ had an article on historical trends of HFA:
(caution - large PDF)
https://sabr.box.net/shared/static/lazleg8tbbtdmb7ulfv5.pdf
It concluded that HFA was becoming less and less over time. In 2003, it was 0.07 meaning a home winning % of .535 (or 1.36 wins over 81 games)