As of Sunday, only two division titles were wrapped up—by the Mets and Royals—and in both instances the teams rested their regular players despite not having secured a home-field advantage through the playoffs.
Why? The home-field advantage—while still an advantage in baseball—traditionally isn’t as pronounced in the major leagues as it is in other sports.
It’s another in a line of odd things about baseball that we’ve grown accustomed to.
Last year’s Fall Classic was played between wild card teams San Francisco and Kansas City—both of which advanced through the LDS and LCS without the benefit of a home-field advantage. Then in their World Series matchup, the Royals—by virtue of the AL winning the All-Star Game exhibition—had the home-field advantage so, of course, the Giants won in seven.
No one blinked an eye at this, of course. It’s baseball.
In all, six of the seven baseball postseason series last year—excluding the one-game wild card playoff games—were won by teams who were forced to play more games on the road than at home. Even more telling, the top seeds in each league—the Orioles and Nationals—won just a single game between them (1–6) before exiting.
To be fair, last year was an outlier in baseball. The previous October saw the top seeds in both leagues—Boston and St. Louis—meet in the World Series and the homefield-advantaged Red Sox won the title.
Still, that kind of extreme would never happen in professional basketball or football—sports where the top teams generally sport a regular season winning percentage between 75 and 95 percent. For perspective, a 100-win team in baseball (we haven’t had one since 2011) has a winning percentage of just 62 percent. In baseball, the better team doesn’t always win—home or away, playoffs or regular season.
The last time an NBA top seed was bounced in the first round was 2012 when the eighth-seeded Philadelphia Sixers—before they went into perpetual rebuilding mode—ousted a Derrick Rose-less Bulls team in six. Meanwhile, 13 of this year’s 15 playoff series were won by the team wearing the home white uniforms. Never have the top seeds lost in the opening round in the same season.
The NFL has a similar advantage. Eight of last year’s 10 playoff games were won by the home team and over the last four postseasons, the team with the homefield advantage has a 28–12 record.
Another reason for the difference is how the games are played.
