Thursday, October 02, 2008

What Home Field Advantage?

While all three home teams yesterday, in the first day of the MLB playoffs, put runs on the board first, only one of them went on to win the game! Philly got up 3-0 and then held on for a 3-1 victory (the tying run was on 2nd base when the game ended), but the Cubs squandered a 2-0 early lead (losing 7-2 to the Dodgers) and the Angels fell 4-1 to Boston after scoring first.

Just to complete the Game 1 picture, Tampa Bay several minutes ago jumped off to a 1-0 lead in the second inning on the strength of an Evan "Don't Call Him Eva" Longoria solo home run in their home opener against the White Sox. That means that all four of the series started with home team leads, which is something.

I also saw an interesting stat about teams that win Game 1 in the best-of-5 Divisional Series: in the National League, something like 23 out of 26 of them have gone on to win the series, while in the American League, that's only happened in 12 of the 26 series! What a weird difference to have between the two leagues. That would seem to suggest that Philadelphia and the Dodgers are now sitting pretty, whereas the Red Sox actually have the odds slightly against them thanks to their win in LA last night.

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