Does Home Field Advantage Really Evaporate in October?

In terms of throwing shade within the playoffs lately, nothing has caught as a lot – not even your least favourite broadcaster – than the idea of dwelling subject benefit. The explanation for the unfavorable emotions isn’t stunning. Apart from a potential first-round bye, dwelling subject benefit is the principle reward for playoff groups that win extra regular-season video games than different playoff groups.

It’s true that dwelling groups have struggled in latest postseasons, however they really haven’t been too dangerous this yr. The 19-18 file of dwelling groups isn’t essentially the most scintillating of tallies, however their .513 profitable proportion throughout 37 video games is just not precisely a surprising departure from the .522 profitable proportion for dwelling groups in the course of the 2024 common season. Essentially the most video games a workforce can probably 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 information are noisy given the comparatively small variety of postseason video games, even below the present format, however the latest points with dwelling subject benefit appear to largely be a 2023 factor, when dwelling groups went 15-26, comfortably their worst yr. Smoothing out the information a bit doesn’t actually do a lot, both.

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

Returning to 2023 yet one more time, I went again and seemed on the projections, each from ZiPS and regular-season file or Pythagorean file. Utilizing every workforce’s precise 2023 file, the typical dwelling workforce within the playoffs had a .562 regular-season profitable proportion; it was .551 for the street groups. It’s a .564/.553 break up utilizing the Pythagorean data. However I nonetheless have all of the projected matchups and rosters in 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 dwelling subject benefit fully faraway from the equation, the street groups have been truly barely stronger, projecting the typical dwelling workforce at .545 and the typical street workforce at .556. Going through off in opposition to one another, ZiPS anticipated dwelling groups to have a .489 file within the 31 precise playoff video games, with an 8% likelihood of going 15-26 or worse.

Trying on the Wild Card period as an entire, dwelling groups have gone .540 over 1,045 playoffs video games. Within the common season over the identical period, dwelling 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 workforce in a sport of precisely equal groups.) So why does it really feel so dangerous? I believe one cause might be discovered within the charts above. House groups had a reasonably 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 dwelling subject benefit is working as meant, and the five-year runs stayed barely above the historic development till the 2023 dwelling subject crash.

Since that crash feels particularly dangerous, it’s pure that folks seek for deeper which means in knowledge that don’t actually have lots to present. 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 fashionable baseball or fashionable gamers, both. House subject benefit has been comparatively steady within the common season all through baseball historical past.

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

The bigger drawback is solely that essentially, dwelling subject benefit simply isn’t an enormous deal in baseball. It’s not as large a deal in different sports activities as some suppose, however not like within the different main sports activities, the distinction in baseball between an excellent workforce, a superb workforce, a awful workforce, and the Chicago White Sox is just not that giant. Different sports activities don’t want dwelling subject benefit to be as a lot of a differentiator, particularly within the playoffs. A number of years again, Michael Lopez, Greg Matthews, and Ben Baumer crunched some numbers and estimated that to match the better-team-advances charge of the NBA playoffs, MLB groups would want to play best-of-75 playoff sequence. I actually love me some baseball, however I can’t think about I’d nonetheless watch World Sequence Recreation 63 with the identical depth as I do each Fall Traditional sport now. Apart from, the MLBPA wouldn’t be on board, and the calendar would make {that a} sensible impossibility anyway.

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

So what does this all imply? In all chance, dwelling subject benefit within the playoffs hasn’t modified in any significant method. And isn’t actually all that large of a deal within the first place. With out altering the very nature of the postseason considerably — aggressive adjustments reminiscent of requiring the lower-seeded workforce sweep within the Wild Card sequence to advance — baseball has a really restricted capability to reward particular person playoff groups based mostly on their regular-season outcomes. House subject benefit isn’t damaged; it’s working within the extraordinarily restricted method that one ought to anticipate. If the Dodgers beat the Yankees within the World Sequence this yr, it in all probability received’t be as a result of they have been rewarded yet one more potential dwelling sport.