By Grant Bisbee / The Athletic
Home-field advantage is a given, regardless of the sport.
Last season, the winning percentage across MLB was .522 at home and .478 on the road. In 1974, the difference was .533 to .467. In 1924, it was .538 at home and .462 on the road. There will be small differences year over year, and the effect seems to be trending downward from a century ago, but considering road teams traveled by train for 18-game trips back then, the advantage has been remarkably steady.
As the samples get smaller, the size of the advantage can change, but evidence that the advantage exists is always there. Every team has a winning record at home in franchise history, including the Miami Marlins, who are 406 games under .500 overall since coming into the league. Home-field advantage is one of the few things in baseball you can trust.
At least, it used to be.
It does not take a lot of effort to hate a leaguewide rule change, such as the one that introduced an automatic runner at second base in extra innings in 2020. It’s different from what you are used to, so you hate it. It’s mental resistance. Anyone can offer some basic reasons for why the automatic base runner in extra innings is a garbage rule: It’s different from what we remember. It’s aesthetically displeasing. It just feels wrong.
Viewed through the lens of home-field advantage is where you truly find evidence that this rule change is unholy and subjectively wrong, and it goes something like this:
The home team’s winning percentage in extra innings from 1901 to 2019 was .523.
The home team’s winning percentage in extra innings from 2020 to 2024 was .493.
In 917 extra-inning games over the last five seasons, the road team has had a slight advantage. The rule change has broken the sport when it comes to one of its most universal truisms.
I will throw out some theories as to why this has happened, but first, a note about sample size. While 917 games is a strong sample, it is not the same as the 17,992 extra-inning games that came before it. Maybe, in time, the home teams will start winning as much in extra innings as they did before 2020.
My preferred theory, though, is that the situations are not equal for both teams. The automatic base runner makes it easier for each team to score a run, but when the away team goes first, it gains a slight but legitimate advantage in knowing if it needs to protect a lead in the bottom half of the inning. The home team will never get the chance to protect a lead. It can only protect a tie.
It is asymmetrical warfare. A team that is guaranteed to win with three more outs can use its best reliever to protect the lead if it has not already used him; the home team can use its best reliever only to protect a tie. If the away team is up by two runs or more in extra innings, it can safely ignore the runner at second, whereas the home team will never get that luxury. The home team will always have to pay attention to the runner because if it is in the field, that means it is a tie game, by definition. A home team can never be up by two runs or more in extra innings unless the game has been decided by a walk-off homer, so it will always hurt its win probability more if the opposing runner moves to third base in the top half of any extra inning.
The counter to all of this is that the home team gets an advantage in the bottom half of the inning if it knows it needs just one run to win. This is true, and the home team can play for just one run if that is its preferred strategy, whereas the away team does not intentionally settle for just one run. But while that advantage is legitimate, it is also easier for the opponent to counter.
The home team can never throw the kitchen sink at the task of preventing a single run, but the away team can. It can intentionally walk batters to set up forces, and it can brush off the second runner of an inning because his run will never matter. The away team can bring an outfielder in to play the infield if the situation is dire enough. It can take riskier chances at the plate to prevent a single run if that is the difference between a win or a loss.
The advantages are slight, and they will not show up in most extra-inning games, but they are still advantages for the away team. As of now, the won-lost records are confirming the advantages for the away team are slight but real, and it has created one of the most unthinkable situations in sports: The home team is the one at a disadvantage in extra innings.
Given enough seasons, all teams will play a similar amount of extra-inning games at home and the road, so the overall impact on a team-by-team basis will even out. One of the unintended consequences, though, is that fewer home crowds will get to see a home victory, as the sports gods so clearly intended. It’s right there in the song: Root, root, root for the home team. If they don’t win, it’s a shame.
This is not my biggest gripe with the automatic runner. That would be the fact that a team can win a baseball game despite not doing anything right and without the other team doing something wrong. Without the automatic runner, a runner can get on base only if the batting team succeeds or the fielding team messes up. A team can win with a walk and three balks, but it will at least have to draw the walk. It can win on an error, but that’s the other team messing up.
Under the current rule, a pitcher can allow the two weakest balls put in play by any team that entire season, strike out the final batter of the inning and still lose. The winning team in this situation did not do anything right — it hit two excuse-me squibs and struck out. The losing team did not do anything wrong — the pitcher induced two weak balls in play, and the defense behind him converted them into outs.
You can say that simply making contact is an example of the winning team doing something right, but I reject that. Hitting the ball so poorly that it is converted into an out should be rewarded only if there is a success or a mistake that precedes it. The automatic runner is like someone asking us to pretend the other team allowed a leadoff double.
The benefits are shorter games and (ostensibly) healthier pitchers. There are definitely fewer extra innings being played every season, although the health component has not manifested in an obvious way yet, if it ever will.
Taking free baseball away from the fans, how dare you. That’s also right there in the song. You’re not supposed to care when you ever get back.
The ghost runner rule is a horrid change, and always will be. And it takes the one thing that should be a constant throughout sports — home-field advantage — and tosses it away.
There are bigger problems in baseball, but there are not that many that are easier to fix. Just get rid of it, and forget it ever happened. It would be easy and about five years too late.
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