History Is On The Visitor’s Side Home-Field Advantage Means Very Little In Baseball Playoffs

Aside from the wild card concept itself, the treatment of the Cleveland Indians has generated the most heated criticism of the new playoff format.

The Indians, the critics cry, have the best record in baseball, but they are being treated no better than the wild card team because like the wild card team, they don’t have the home-field advantage. They don’t even get to play the wild card team, but that’s because they don’t have the homefield advantage.

History, however, suggests that the sites of their games should not concern the Indians. In the 16 years that five-game series determined the league pennant winners, from 1969 through 1984, the team with the home-field advantage - the last three games - won the American League pennant only six times.

Of the seven times teams won with three-game sweeps, the team without the home-field advantage was the sweeper five times, winning the first two games, then going to the other team’s park and wrapping it up. Home teams won only 60 percent of the games (37 of 62), which does not reflect the kind of home-field advantage that teams in other sports enjoy.

The results of National League games in those series were even more disadvantageous to home teams. They won only one more game than they lost, 32 to 31, for a 51-percent success ratio.

Baseball people, even when confronted with the results, hold different views of the fairness or significance of home-field advantage. They are exemplified by two former players who were teammates on five Yankees teams that competed in five-game series.

“I don’t think it means a whole lot,” Willie Randolph said.

Said Lou Piniella, “I think the three games at home are the most important.”

The former teammates may get to test their opposite views this week, Piniella as manager of the sky-high Seattle Mariners, Randolph as third-base coach of the rebounding Yankees.

“There’s such an intensity and kind of a focus when you get in the first round of the playoffs it doesn’t matter,” Randolph said. “It’s nice to be home, get some home cooking, but in some cases, it’s better to be on the road. You’re more relaxed, and there aren’t as many distractions.”

In baseball, the former second baseman added, “The home field doesn’t help that much.

“The enthusiasm is great and you like to have that support, but when you’re focused and intense, scrapping like dogs, you don’t care where you are,” he said. “You just want to get to the big dance.”

Furthermore, he said, “You’re not going to be intimidated by the crowds, like basketball and football, where I think the crowd can have more of an impact.” There are even crowds, Randolph said, that a team can use to its advantage. “Like when we go to Boston,” he explained. “It kind of inspires you more to be in hostile surroundings. In Boston, you love to beat the crowd and send them home mad.”

Randolph recalled that the Yankees always were focused and ready to play, whether they were at Yankee Stadium or in Kansas City or Oakland. He acknowledged that the stadium was “totally electric” for the fifth game of the 1976 playoffs; “I could feel the energy through the whole place,” he said.

That’s an instance where the home field could mean something, Randolph added, but he quickly recalled the following season, when the Royals had the home-field advantage.

“I don’t remember that affecting us much at all,” he said. “We had a veteran group of guys. We were focused on getting back to the World Series because we embarrassed ourselves so much the previous year.”

The Yankees trailed, 2-1, in that series but won the last two games in Kansas City. No other American League team overcame a 2-1 deficit and won in the other team’s park during the existence of the five-game series.

The way Piniella sees it, the object is to split the first two games in the other team’s park. “All of a sudden,” he said, “you’ve got the best two of three in your ball park. I think it’s very advantageous. If you win the first two on the road, it’s a very clear advantage.”

Apprised of the 6-10 record of teams that had the advantage, Piniella suggested that it probably would be necessary to consider the relative strengths of the teams in the 10 losing series.

In six of those series, the teams with the better won-lost records lost, meaning that neither record nor home-field advantage helped. It should be noted, though, that in four of those seasons the difference between the records of the two teams was one or two games.