History validates home field advantage in the World Series

Ten years have passed since Major League Baseball’s decision to award home-field advantage in the World Series to the winner of the All-Star Game played in July. Taken in an effort to generate more competitive fan and player interest in the All-Star Game after the 2002 Game ended in an eleven-inning 7-7 tie, the decision was based on the belief that the home team in actually has the advantage. in series games. By home field advantage, it means that the team from the league that wins the All-Star Game will host the first two games and, if necessary, the sixth and decisive Game 7. However, was Major League Baseball’s decision significantly supported by past performance history?

The first Fall Classic, won by the Pittsburgh Pirates over the Boston Americans (who would become the Boston Red Sox in 1908), was played in 1903. From that initial contest until 2002, the last season before the decision of the Major Leagues, 97 were played. Fifty-nine percent (59%) were won by teams with home field advantage, forty-one percent (41%) by road teams. A closer look at these percentages will give a clearer picture of how the home team has fared in past World Series.

Prior to 1980 (1903 – 1980), home teams won 40 Series titles while visiting teams won 36. In Game 7, when playing in front of home fans should give a team an advantage, 16 of 27 during this period. by visiting teams. In one stretch of time during this total period, 1952 -1979, 13 of the 16 Seventh Games were won by the visiting team. History before 1980 does not show the home team having a significant advantage.

However, a trend of dominance by home teams is evident from 1980 to 2002. Nineteen of the twenty-two titles were won by the home team during that period, including the entire 7-game Series. This 22-year trend definitely supports Major League Baseball’s decision to use home field advantage as an incentive for leagues in All-Star competition. The trend has continued since the decision as the home team, determined by the results of the All-Star Game, has won six of the last 9 World Series titles.

The current trend is a reflection of the overall parity among Major League Baseball teams. By the 1980s, a more distributed or, what some say, diluted talent base, caused by the addition of more major league teams in the 1960s and 1970s, became evident in major league rosters. . Consistently strong teams like the New York Yankees who won 4 World Series Game Sevens on the road (1952, 1956, 1958, 1962); the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1957 Milwaukee Braves, and 1975 Cincinnati Reds, each of whom won one; they were more difficult to build after the expansion.

The free agency of players that began in the late 1970s did not change the current trend. It traded players to teams that could afford higher payrolls as expected, but it didn’t create the kind of dominant teams that could win Series games on the road. Of the four World Series titles the New York Yankees won between 1980 and 2002, only one (1999) was won when they were the road team.

Major League Baseball’s 2002 decision to award home-field advantage in the World Series to the league that wins the All-Star Game is backed by history. The 22-year trend from 1980 to 2002 indicated that playing on their home field in front of cheering fans, especially in an important sixth or decisive seventh game, seemed to give teams an advantage. Has the decision increased the competitiveness of the All-Star Game? It seems that it has. Even though this year’s game was an 8-0 victory in the National League, the Games from 2003 to 2009 were all decided by one run.

But how long will the trend continue? That will be known in late October or early November, depending on the number of games in this year’s Series. After losing 7 consecutive All-Star Games from 2003 to 2009, the National League won the last 3. Continuing the current trend, the San Francisco Giants won the 2010 Series and the St. Louis Cardinals won in 2011, which was 7 games. Major League Baseball’s 2002 decision will continue to stand if one of the National League play-off teams; the St. Louis Cardinals, the Atlanta Braves, the Cincinnati Reds, the Washington Nationals or the San Francisco Giants, is crowned the 2012 World Series Champion.