Extreme Home Field (Dis)Advantage

Posted by Raphy on May 27, 2010

This season the Oakland A's and New York Mets have taken home field advantage to the extreme. Both teams sport impressive 18-9 records at home and embarrassing 6-14 records on the road. This is obviously something that will even out over the course of the season. However, they both currently sit atop the leader board for the biggest difference in home winning percentage vs. road winning percentage. Here are the all time leaders:

Rank	Team	Year	Home Wins	Home Losses	WP%	Road Wins	Road Losses	WP%	Difference
1	NYM	2010	18	9	0.667	6	14	0.300	0.367
2	OAK	2010	18	9	0.667	6	14	0.300	0.367
3	PHA	1945	39	35	0.527	13	63	0.171	0.356
4	PHA	1902	56	17	0.767	27	36	0.429	0.339
5	BOS	1949	61	16	0.792	35	42	0.455	0.338
6	COL	1996	55	26	0.679	28	53	0.346	0.333
7	MIN	1987	56	25	0.691	29	52	0.358	0.333
8	HOU	1978	50	31	0.617	24	57	0.296	0.321
9	PHA	1908	46	30	0.605	22	55	0.286	0.320
10	CHW	1903	41	28	0.594	19	49	0.279	0.315
11	CHW	1902	48	20	0.706	26	40	0.394	0.312
12	BOS	1952	50	27	0.649	26	51	0.338	0.312
13	CHC	1933	56	23	0.709	30	45	0.400	0.309
14	PHA	1949	52	25	0.675	29	48	0.377	0.299
15	COL	2003	49	32	0.605	25	56	0.309	0.296
16	BOS	1961	50	31	0.617	26	55	0.321	0.296
17	FLA	1996	52	29	0.642	28	53	0.346	0.296
18	CHW	1972	55	23	0.705	32	44	0.421	0.284
19	HOU	1990	49	32	0.605	26	55	0.321	0.284
20	HOU	1967	46	35	0.568	23	58	0.284	0.284

On the opposite end of the spectrum are Milwaukee and Tampa who have played much better on the road than at home. For the time being, both sit 1-2 atop the leader board for the biggest difference in road winning percentage vs. home winning percentage. Here are the all-time leaders:

Rank	Team	Year	Home Wins	Home Losses	WP%	Road Wins	Road Losses	WP%	Difference
1	MIL	2010	5	15	0.250	13	13	0.500	-0.250
2	TBR	2010	13	10	0.565	19	5	0.792	-0.226
3	CHC	1994	20	39	0.339	29	25	0.537	-0.198
4	PIT	1908	42	35	0.545	56	21	0.727	-0.182
5	KCR	1998	29	51	0.363	43	38	0.531	-0.168
6	BRO	1948	36	41	0.468	48	29	0.623	-0.156
7	PHA	1948	36	41	0.468	48	29	0.623	-0.156
8	BOS	1980	36	45	0.444	47	32	0.595	-0.150
9	KCR	1981	19	28	0.404	31	25	0.554	-0.149
10	CIN	2001	27	54	0.333	39	42	0.481	-0.148
11	STL	1928	42	35	0.545	53	24	0.688	-0.143
12	BSN	1923	22	55	0.286	32	45	0.416	-0.130
13	CHW	1912	34	43	0.442	44	33	0.571	-0.130
14	CIN	1972	42	34	0.553	53	25	0.679	-0.127
15	CHC	1909	47	29	0.618	57	20	0.740	-0.122
16	OAK	1971	46	35	0.568	55	25	0.688	-0.120
17	LAD	1970	39	42	0.481	48	32	0.600	-0.119
18	MIL	1999	32	48	0.400	42	39	0.519	-0.119
19	WSH	1960	32	45	0.416	41	36	0.532	-0.117
20	SDP	1972	26	54	0.325	32	41	0.438	-0.113

Resources: Home and road records are readily available using the PI Situational Records tool.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Season Finders, Splits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

9 Responses to “Extreme Home Field (Dis)Advantage”

Evan Nelson Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
A popup ad with an autoplay noise? Come on, b-ref. That ain't cool. I'M AT WORK, TRYING TO READ YOUR BLOG QUIETLY.
Gerry Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
"All-time" apparently means "since 1901." In 1897, Cleveland was 49-16, .754 at home but 20-46, .303 on the road, for a .451 differential, dwarfing anything in the table above. See also New York 1893, Louisville 1885, Boston 1895, etc., etc. See the post by Patrick Rock to the Usenet newsgroup rec.sport.baseball, Subject: Home/road splits, 18 August 2000.
Atlas Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
I'll second the comment made by #1. That was really low-class.
Raphy Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
As always, Gerry, you are correct. The situational records tool only goes back to 1901.

"See the post by Patrick Rock to the Usenet newsgroup rec.sport.baseball, Subject: Home/road splits, 18 August 2000."

Where can I find that?
Jeff Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
The 45 A's are third on the first list, while the 48 A's are 7th on the second list. Both played at Shibe park. Interesting.....
Gerry Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Raphy, with any luck, posts to Usenet newsgroups are archived at Google Groups. You can go to Google, select groups from the drop-down menu under more, go to advanced search, ask for posts with splits in the subject header, from between 16 and 20 August 2000. Other variations on that procedure should also work.

If you don't want to go through all that, just try http://groups.google.com.au/group/rec.sport.baseball/browse_thread/thread/5f9e1e827b6e0faa/2caad5015be9f97a?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=insubject%3Asplits&pli=1
Raphy Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Thanks Gerry!
Ray Says:
May 27th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Connie Mack's A's perfected the techniques later employed by the Padres and the Marlins to annoy and alienate their fans, developing talent then waving byebye when it became more costly than they could support in the matter to which it was accustomed.
Kahuna Tuna Says:
May 28th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Not surprising to see two teams from the 1902 AL in the top ten of full-season home winning percentage compared to road winning percentage. The 1902 AL averaged a home winning record of 42-25 and a road winning record of 25-42 for an average home/road split of .254, by far the highest figure of the 20th Century. All AL teams except Boston had a home/road split of at least .207.

To follow up on Gerry's comment about pre-1900 home/road splits being larger, the NL average split was at least .219 every year from 1893 to 1897, and the 1890 NL average league difference was .262. The largest home/road split I've been able to find is .273 for the 1885 American Association. (Actually the 1877 NL figure was larger, but those teams played 60-game schedules.) Four teams from the 1885 AA had home/road splits above .300, from Baltimore at .305 to Louisville at .375 (as noted by Gerry in #2 above).

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