Does Home Field Advantage Really Evaporate in October?

In relation to throwing shade within the playoffs in recent times, nothing has caught as a lot – not even your least favourite broadcaster – than the idea of dwelling discipline benefit. The explanation for the unfavorable emotions isn’t shocking. Aside from a attainable first-round bye, dwelling discipline 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 document of dwelling groups isn’t probably the most scintillating of tallies, however their .513 successful share throughout 37 video games isn’t precisely a surprising departure from the .522 successful share for dwelling groups in the course of the 2024 common season. Probably the most video games a workforce can probably play in a single postseason is 22, and 9 factors of successful share 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 discipline 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 all the time discover an oddity should you shave knowledge paper-thin like prosciutto, however with knowledge as risky as this, you’ll largely find yourself with bleeps and bloops that don’t actually imply something. Like, certain, groups are 29-31 since 1995 at dwelling in Sport 7s and Sport 5s, however that’s primarily the odd blip of NLDS dwelling groups going 4-12 of their rubber matches.

Returning to 2023 another time, I went again and appeared on the projections, each from ZiPS and regular-season document or Pythagorean document. Utilizing every workforce’s precise 2023 document, the common dwelling workforce within the playoffs had a .562 regular-season successful share; it was .551 for the street groups. It’s a .564/.553 cut up utilizing the Pythagorean information. However I nonetheless have all of the projected matchups and rosters firstly of the playoffs saved, so I re-projected the outcomes of each precise recreation that was performed. ZiPS thought on a game-by-game foundation, with dwelling discipline benefit utterly faraway from the equation, the street groups had been really barely stronger, projecting the common dwelling workforce at .545 and the common street workforce at .556. Dealing with off towards one another, ZiPS anticipated dwelling groups to have a .489 document within the 31 precise playoff video games, with an 8% probability of going 15-26 or worse.

Wanting 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 successful share. In different phrases, the playoffs simply aren’t that totally different from the common season. (ZiPS assumes a .535 playoff successful share for the house workforce in a recreation of precisely equal groups.) So why does it really feel so dangerous? I think one motive could 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 successful share from 2013 to 2017. In that context, it conveys the sensation that dwelling discipline benefit is working as supposed, and the five-year runs stayed barely above the historic development till the 2023 dwelling discipline crash.

Since that crash feels particularly dangerous, it’s pure that individuals seek for deeper which means in knowledge that don’t actually have rather a lot to offer. 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 drawback is solely that essentially, dwelling discipline 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 a terrific workforce, a great workforce, a awful workforce, and the Chicago White Sox isn’t that enormous. Different sports activities don’t want dwelling discipline benefit to be as a lot of a differentiator, particularly within the playoffs. Just a few years again, Michael Lopez, Greg Matthews, and Ben Baumer crunched some numbers and estimated that to match the better-team-advances price of the NBA playoffs, MLB groups would want 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 recreation 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 discipline benefit in each single recreation doesn’t drastically weight the cube. Assuming a .535 dwelling successful share and evenly matched groups, the house workforce would require a best-of-13 collection to grow 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 dwelling discipline benefit (one further recreation) between two groups, the one wherein the house workforce is .020 wins higher than its opponent (simply over three wins in a season). I then ran the numbers for the way typically the higher workforce could be anticipated to win, primarily based on collection size.

So what does this all imply? In all chance, dwelling discipline 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 akin to requiring the lower-seeded workforce sweep within the Wild Card collection to advance — baseball has a really restricted potential 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 method that one ought to count on. If the Dodgers beat the Yankees within the World Collection this yr, it in all probability received’t be as a result of they had been rewarded another attainable dwelling recreation.