Boswell: In World Series, home field is a big advantage, and not to be given lightly
|
Version 0 of 1. NEW YORK — The World Series is unfair. And major changes are probably needed to fix it. The team with home-field advantage in the Series has a huge edge, far more important to deciding the outcome than in the NFL, NBA or NHL. The problem coincides with a rule change in 1986, when Major League Baseball allowed the home team to use its own league’s rules regarding the designated hitter. The DH plays in an American League park, then, but not in a National League one. At the time, no one thought there’d be much impact. Wrong. On Friday night, baseball played its 162nd World Series game under those rules. (By accident, that’s the same number of games as a normal regular season.) And the team with home-field advantage for the World Series has a 99-63 record in those games — an incredible .611 winning percentage — and has won 22 of the 28 Series played, a .786 mark. The idea that such an edge should be awarded to the league that wins the All-Star Game, essentially an exhibition game — as baseball now does — is insane. [Syndergaard turns up the heat as Mets win Game 3] If you like level playing fields, then the Mets’ 9-3 win Friday, cutting their Series deficit to one, is refreshing. The Mets can now look for encouragement to the ’14 Giants, who beat K.C. even though the Royals had home-field advantage last year, too. Do the Mets have a Madison Bumgarner, who threw five innings of shutout relief to win last year’s Game 7 on the road? Even if they do, the World Series will in truth remain on the same un-level playing field that’s now defined a full generation. In baseball, if you want to find out whether a won-lost record is a fluke, the first place you look for confirmation is run differential. Well, in those 161 games, the team with home-field advantage for the whole Series — not just in a particular game — had a run differential of +149. That mark would predict a record of 98-63, right in line with 99-62. In other words, for the past 28 World Series, and so far in this one, the team that plays Games 1 and 2 and, if necessary, Games 6 and 7 at home has tended to play as if it were the best team in baseball. Why has this happened? From comments by players and managers for many years, my belief is that teams feel an enormous sense of security and confidence if they can begin the Series with two games at home — playing not only in front of their own crowd and on their own field but under their own league’s rules. That sense of security and confidence is redoubled by the knowledge that they also can come back home with everything stacked their way — a fast start, home fans for the deciding games, and the DH rules in their favor at the end. Since 1986, 11 teams have come home for Game 6 trailing by a game. You’d expect (statistically) that they’d only pull out three or so Series wins in those 11 chances. Instead it’s the exact opposite. The home-field-advantage team has won both Games 6 and 7 on eight of those 11 occasions. The only time since the rules change in 1986 that a team has won a Game 7 on the road was last year. If the next 10 years reconfirm this exaggerated trend, I fear for the long-term credibility of the World Series. When Bumgarner saved the Giants last year, I almost wanted to thank him for bucking the odds. But we’re at it again this year: The Royals won the first two games of this Series at home, including the incredible 14-inning, five-plus-hour opener with dozens of twists and turns, in which home field probably helped. Would the Mets have butchered a flyball into an inside-the-park home run on their first defensive pitch of the night if they had been in CitiField? Maybe. But being in a park where they didn’t play all year hardly improved their chances. [Game 1 recap: Royals outlast Mets in a marathon of an opener] Did a roaring crowd in the bottom of the ninth somehow help Alex Gordon hit a game-tying homer? Didn’t hurt. Did the pressure of playing in so many sudden-death bottom halves of innings finally contribute to a Mets miscue — like David Wright’s fielding error to open the 14th inning? In Game 2, did the home crowd help inspire Kansas City’s Johnny Cueto, who was shaken by the Toronto crowd in his previous start, allowing eight runs in two innings? At home, where the Royals have carefully lined him up to start both Games 2 and 6, he pitched a complete-game two-hitter. Both Cueto and Manager New Yost referred afterward to how much pitching at home aided him. Now the Royals arrive in New York knowing they need only one win in three games to return home with a chance to win it there. If they get swept, they still have two games at home. Talk about playing with house money. The team in the Mets’ position, with the middle three games at home, gets some help from that format. But not nearly as much as the Royals get from starting and finishing at home. And MLB awards this diamond of an advantage based on the all-star game? Give home field in the Series to the league with the better record (the AL this year). Or give it to the team with the most regular season wins (the Royals this year). But at least, if the rules remain in place, award the advantage on the basis of something with meaning. [Why Fox withheld the news of Edinson Volquez’s father’s death] If any other sport decided its championship in a manner that gave such a huge and unmerited advantage to one side, the whole sport would debate the problem until it was solved. Or at least mitigated. Baseball hasn’t even noticed. Or if it has, it has kept the knowledge to itself and hoped things would “even out.” My suggestion to even things out: Let the visiting team, not the home team, use its own league’s DH rules in the Series. You may gasp, but if such a rule were in effect now, the Royals could use Kendrys Morales, their top RBI man (106), here in New York but not in Kansas City. If some team in the Royals’ position in the future thinks, “If we just get back home, we’ll win it,” let them also think, “But we’ll also have to do it using the other league’s rules. That’s going to hurt us.” That suggestion may not be the answer. But baseball better start looking for one. For more by Thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell. |