2022 Phillies Post-Season Campaign Discussion

[andyb]

Home field advantage in baseball is the least important advantage of the major sports. Baseball with these short series compounds the upset possibilities. Basketball for instance has a larger home field advantage and longer series. Hence many fewer upsets.

It is what it is. I would prefer 4 divisions with byes to the division winners and 7-game series after that, but there would still be upsets in any wild card system.

[allentown]

Home field can be a huge advantage in baseball. Baseball is the only major sport without a standard playing area. The dimensions, including shape and height of OF wall and amount of foul territory, differ among parks, some teams can elect open or closed dome, teams tailor the grass to suit their team, some teams also tailor the mound on the playing field and, at least by anecdote, the visiting team's warm-up mound.

[julio]

It’s nice to assert that, a-town… but what we need to do is actually look at home vs. road success of MLB playoff teams, over a large-enough sample size to be meaningful. It may be that the home field advantage is real, and significant, or it may be that this is just “conventional wisdom,” which we know is rife in baseball.

What we do know is that MLB has offered up the “home field advantage” edge for division winners as a way of justifying inclusion of a bunch of also-ran clubs in the post-season. Given MLB’s history of open, honest communication with the fan base (heh), I’m not inclined to buy this argument without looking at historical results.

[andyb]

Here is a quick comparison. Baseball (and hockey) have the smallest advantages:

Does home-field advantage matter in the MLB Playoffs?

[Aquapong]

The regular season is a marathon. The winners of that marathon do get some advantages over lower seeded teams in the playoffs. The playoffs are a sprint however. The importance of every ab is magnified and there’s no more we’ll get em tomorrow.

Some teams are built for the regular season to maximize the chances to win a lot of games. Some teams are built for the pressure cooker that is the playoffs. Some teams are built for both. Some are just lucky.

[zambonir]

And some teams just got hot for four weeks. If it's October you're legends, and if it's August, not.

In the Phillies case you also had that sort of tale of two teams - a club with struggling young players and post-lockout pitching rust (yeah all teams had it but Wheeler and Suarez seemed more affected than some) that also changed managers and, in the end, most of its bullpen too. At least 1/3 of that W-L record - and certainly the terrible record against the Mets - was a different team.

Of course the real "reward" of the home wild card series is not the competitive advantage but the $$$. If the Phillies had been within closer striking distance of the 4th seed they might have been even more aggressive at the deadline.

One thing about this NLCS is these are not two scrappy, low-budget wild cards. The talent and the payroll is high.

[zambonir]

Another good story, if you subscribe

It Is Not Going To Make Sense | Defector

[allentown]

Here is a quick comparison. Baseball (and hockey) have the smallest advantages

I'm not talking about a 'playoff bump'. I'm talking about home field advantage -- regular season and playoffs. The stats presented says home team has 54% chance of winning, visitors 46%.

[andyb]

'm not talking about a 'playoff bump'. I'm talking about home field advantage -- regular season and playoffs. The stats presented says home team has 54% chance of winning, visitors 46%.

The 54% is smaller than other sports. The playoff bump is probably less about crowds and more about talent distribution. That means the gap between the NBA or NFL top seed versus the 6-8 seed is larger than the gap in baseball or hockey.

Starting pitchers and hot goalies just have more impact on the game in their sports and that causes a smaller home field advantage and more upsets. Fewer key plays also for lucky bounces to impact. There are just more scoring opportunities in football and baseball so the better team can win by grinding those out at a better percentage.

[zambonir]

8% doesn't seem all that big to me, but anecdotally, we've seen the Phillies play better at home (particularly in the season series with the Braves), and then there is a truism that a good team is still only really expected to go .500 on the road, and pile up more wins - and indeed, win almost every series - at home.

There's just so many variables though - the crowd (and the crowd impact on officiating), the comfort of home, batting last, familiarity with the ballpark, constructing a roster for that ballpark (though it doesn't seem like the Phillies really do that per se. Like, on the one hand, ground ball pitchers to try and keep the ball in the park but on the other, bad fielders).

[EDmuch]

The most random act in all of sports is shooting a hockey puck at the net. There must be 25 million different things that can happen to that pick on its journey from the stick to the net.

[Sabin]

the Phillies had to win two games on the road, and then one in Atlanta to get to the NFCCG.

Are they playing the Eagles? That's going to divide the fan base.

[DurhamBull]

I was wondering about zambonir's comment about about the Dodgers playing soccer. I don't follow baseball as much as I used to, but I didn't think interleague play had gone that far.

[flyers19rw]

Sometimes the long slog of the regular season exposes flaws in teams that make would them prey in the post season. While other teams that recognized their weaknesses and patched them up enough to win head to head series.
By mid season the Mets FO should have recognized that Scherezer and DeGrom were problematic pitchers. In a series, pitching is the key to victory. What did their FO do to address that? Nothing. The same was true with the Dodgers. When Buehler and Kershaw went down they didn't go out and get replacements for them. As for the Braves, it's a similar situation. Beyond Fried and Wright they had Strider but not much more. To expect a rookie to continue to do well beyond his expected IP for a season was one bridge too far. He broke down and the Braves along with him.
Meanwhile the Phillies patched up their CF issue and added to their BP with Marsh and Robertson. The Padres resolved a major hole in their OF by adding Sosa. The remaining clubs were honest in assessing their needs and were proactive in fixing them. Now they can reap their rewards.

[zambonir]

Haha I know you're joking but I also don't know for sure if you took my meaning.

[DurhamBull]

I didn't get the reference, but it didn't seem that important and I got a chuckle out of the notion of a baseball team playing soccer so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[BostonRoss]

I think the home field advantage is greater in football and basketball because the officiating is more important to the outcome. There isn't a baseball equivalent of calling fouls and penalties, which is fairly subjective, and it's human nature that loud crowds are going to affect these kinds of calls. They probably affect balls and strikes to some degree; so the home field advantage probably is greater during the postseason when the stands are full and noisy.

[zambonir]

It's just that winning the regular season is the most prestigious thing. The various Cups and tournaments are a big deal but they in no way diminish that accomplishment. Man U are the Yankees of English football with 21 titles, not one of which involved a playoff game. Of course the regular season also matters more because teams can be relegated.

(At least I think I've got that right, I'm not really an expert. But as an MLS fan you can see how US playoff culture completely took over in that league, the Supporters Shield is valued, but mostly as the #1 seed and a nice banner, the playoffs are still all.)

[el-pietro]

Pretty much right. Outside of the US virtually every league champion is determined by a round robin system where every team plays every other team the same amount of times. The winner is the team with the most points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw) at the end. There are some variations on this format, teams playing 3 series of games, or a split part way through the season where the top half team play each other an additional time, and the bottom teams play each other) but in general it follows the same pattern.
It has flaws, there are plenty of games where very little is up for grabs towards the end of the season, though relegation and in the case of European leagues, qualification for European competitions takes care of a lot of that, and North American leagues with a playoff system have not solved for the dead rubber problem either. We also tend to have the same winners more often. Would it be as interesting if Houston and the Dodgers had won the last 6 or 8 World Series combined?
Ultimately though the team who finishes as Champions are the best team, or very close to it (injuries, and luck still play a part, especially where the gap between the top contenders is small).
We also have a playoff equivalent in cup competitions, both inter and intra league. The Champions League has as much prestige, or more than any individual league championship, especially as it is considered the best of the best, though realistically the best team doesn't always win that as it is less of a marathon and the luck of the draw, form at the right time come more into play.

[andyb]

Would it be as interesting if Houston and the Dodgers had won the last 6 or 8 World Series combined?

Well we could do a Super League! Though that lasted about 2 weeks in Europe. Soccer does have a problem of midlevel teams not having the money to compete for the top and essentially their games being meaningless in the back half of the season if they are not in danger of relegation. Playoffs and wild cards do keep more teams in it so that is good.

One of the big differences in baseball between the regular season and the playoffs is the lack of much of a need for the back half of the pitching staff. We are not seeing Gibson and Nelson for a reason. But if teams only need 7 or 8 pitchers (and there is less need for an offensive bench too) then the playoffs are by definition a different contest. This new format actually drops an off day compared to the previous ones (the 5 game and 7 game series often only have 1 travel day this year instead of 2) though the advantage of winning a series early and at least one game between series does give most teams extra off days. Except the Yankees/Guardians this week of course.