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I hardly know where to start ...

Posted By Brian B.

The points you make:

1)Because of the duration and structure of a playoff series, teams are set up differently than during the regular series. A lower seeded playoff team with 2 stud starters with a lot of innings (say Schilling & Johnson), can be used to start 5 of the 7 games, thus tilting the balance of power (sounds like a strategy Bob Brenly used doesn't it).

I'm talking solely about the first 2 games. Better team at home, human manager, last licks. You presume that the lower seeded teams have better starters in the first 2 slots and then tail off. It's far more likely that, on the whole, the top 2 starters for the teams with better records are considerably suoerior to the top 2 starters on the inferior team.

2)If the higher seeded team is much better than their opponent, it is quite possible for it to be a 5 game series, the favored team wins one of 2 at home, then their superior depth takes over and they sweep on the road. Thus you'd actualy have something you expect, the better team winning the series, with 4 of the 5 games won by the visiting team.

This would slant the results even more towards the visitors, which is why I chose to look at the first 2 games only!!! That is a sample that for a variety of reasons already mentioned should yield a significant advantage for the home team. The fact that it didn't is the whole point here.

3)Also, playoff games get much more care & focus by the owners, so a visiting owner can set up a 2 or 3 game 'road trip' and really focus on matching up hitters with the opponents pitchers, thus throwing off the statistic.

Are you truly arguing that the away team's mechanism for choosing their lineups and the manager during the games is an advantage in PB ? Does this mean that the home managers, who put together superior teams which produced better records over 160 games, put no thought into how they manage their playoff games. This makes little or no sense.

4)The primary reason we see 'home field advantage' in sports is due to the players getting to stay at home, with families, in their environment etc and the 'not insignificant' factor of home crowd & ballpark. In PB, all those influences are meaningless so I would hope that the ratio of home wins to road wins is closer to 50%.

Really? The why do almost all pro football teams spend the night before home games in a hotel? The ability to bat last provides the advantage in baseball. Teams have to play an entirely different strategy on the road, predicated on being on the defensive the whole game. When you add in the inherent home advantages in PB that I've already mentioned it would seem to me that the home team should do at least as well as in MLB.

5)If the robot were the culprit, we would see more home wins than visitor wins, beacuse the robot would be doing a very bad job of managing. This is not the case. I love the challenge of going up against a tough robot.

I'm not blaming the robot, I'm questioning the gameplay; the actual programming in PB. I contend that it's slanted towards the visitors to counterbalance the aforementioned home advantages.

Believe whatever you want, but don't tell me my thinking is flawed and then reel off a succession of unsubstantiated opinions that make little or no sense. Read what I wrote; I am giving some facts and trying to have an intelligent discussion about them. Make what you will of the facts but don't tell me