Does Home Field Advantage Really Evaporate in October?

In terms of throwing shade within the playoffs in recent times, nothing has caught as a lot – not even your least favourite broadcaster – than the idea of house discipline benefit. The rationale for the unfavorable emotions isn’t stunning. Apart from a attainable first-round bye, house discipline benefit is the primary reward for playoff groups that win extra regular-season video games than different playoff groups.

It’s true that house groups have struggled in latest postseasons, however they really haven’t been too dangerous this 12 months. The 19-18 file of house groups isn’t probably the most scintillating of tallies, however their .513 profitable proportion throughout 37 video games just isn’t precisely a surprising departure from the .522 profitable proportion for house groups in the course of the 2024 common season. Essentially the most video games a staff can presumably play in a single postseason is 22, and 9 factors of profitable proportion works out to solely 0.2 wins per 22 video games.

Naturally, the info are noisy given the comparatively small variety of postseason video games, even underneath the present format, however the latest points with house discipline benefit appear to principally be a 2023 factor, when house groups went 15-26, comfortably their worst 12 months. Smoothing out the info a bit doesn’t actually do a lot, both.

You possibly can at all times discover an oddity when you shave information paper-thin like prosciutto, however with information as risky as this, you’ll principally find yourself with bleeps and bloops that don’t actually imply something. Like, certain, groups are 29-31 since 1995 at house in Sport 7s and Sport 5s, however that’s primarily the odd blip of NLDS house groups going 4-12 of their rubber matches.

Returning to 2023 yet another time, I went again and seemed on the projections, each from ZiPS and regular-season file or Pythagorean file. Utilizing every staff’s precise 2023 file, the common house staff within the playoffs had a .562 regular-season profitable proportion; it was .551 for the highway groups. It’s a .564/.553 break up utilizing the Pythagorean data. However I nonetheless have all of the projected matchups and rosters at the beginning of the playoffs saved, so I re-projected the outcomes of each precise sport that was performed. ZiPS thought on a game-by-game foundation, with house discipline benefit utterly faraway from the equation, the highway groups have been truly barely stronger, projecting the common house staff at .545 and the common highway staff at .556. Dealing with off in opposition to one another, ZiPS anticipated house groups to have a .489 file within the 31 precise playoff video games, with an 8% probability of going 15-26 or worse.

Wanting on the Wild Card period as a complete, house groups have gone .540 over 1,045 playoffs video games. Within the common season over the identical period, house groups have a .537 profitable proportion. In different phrases, the playoffs simply aren’t that completely different from the common season. (ZiPS assumes a .535 playoff profitable proportion for the house staff in a sport of precisely equal groups.) So why does it really feel so dangerous? I believe one motive may be discovered within the charts above. House groups had a fairly good run within the mid-2010s, on the heels of the growth from eight to 10 playoff groups, peaking at a .581 profitable proportion from 2013 to 2017. In that context, it conveys the sensation that house discipline benefit is working as supposed, and the five-year runs stayed barely above the historic pattern till the 2023 house discipline crash.

Since that crash feels particularly dangerous, it’s pure that individuals seek for deeper that means in information that don’t actually have quite a bit to provide. One widespread cry was blaming the lengthy layoffs from the bye spherical. This argument doesn’t maintain up, as Ben Clemens identified final postseason.

It additionally doesn’t have a lot to do with trendy baseball or trendy gamers, both. House discipline benefit has been comparatively secure within the common season all through baseball historical past.

There’s been some long-term decline, however nothing earth-shattering.

The bigger downside is just that basically, house discipline benefit simply isn’t a giant deal in baseball. It’s not as huge a deal in different sports activities as some suppose, however not like within the different main sports activities, the distinction in baseball between an awesome staff, a superb staff, a awful staff, and the Chicago White Sox just isn’t that giant. Different sports activities don’t want house discipline benefit to be as a lot of a differentiator, particularly within the playoffs. A couple of years again, Michael Lopez, Greg Matthews, and Ben Baumer crunched some numbers and estimated that to match the better-team-advances fee of the NBA playoffs, MLB groups would wish to play best-of-75 playoff collection. I definitely love me some baseball, however I can’t think about I’d nonetheless watch World Collection Sport 63 with the identical depth as I do each Fall Basic sport now. Moreover, the MLBPA wouldn’t be on board, and the calendar would make {that a} sensible impossibility anyway.

Even giving the staff with extra wins house discipline benefit in each single sport doesn’t drastically weight the cube. Assuming a .535 house profitable proportion and evenly matched groups, the house staff would require a best-of-13 collection to turn out to be a 60/40 favourite; to extend its odds to 2-to-1, we’d should make it a best-of-39 collection. Simply to experiment, I simulated collection with the traditional postseason distribution of house discipline benefit (one additional sport) between two groups, the one through which the house staff is .020 wins higher than its opponent (simply over three wins in a season). I then ran the numbers for the way usually the higher staff can be anticipated to win, primarily based on collection size.

So what does this all imply? In all chance, house discipline benefit within the playoffs hasn’t modified in any significant manner. And isn’t actually all that huge of a deal within the first place. With out altering the very nature of the postseason considerably — aggressive adjustments comparable to requiring the lower-seeded staff sweep within the Wild Card collection to advance — baseball has a really restricted skill to reward particular person playoff groups primarily based on their regular-season outcomes. House discipline benefit isn’t damaged; it’s working within the extraordinarily restricted manner that one ought to count on. If the Dodgers beat the Yankees within the World Collection this 12 months, it most likely received’t be as a result of they have been rewarded yet another attainable house sport.