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Home Team Disadvantage

Posted By Brian B.

I posted this last November:


There has been much discussion regarding whether there is a built in home field disadvantage in PB, to counter the natural advantage of a human manager. Some felt, as I do, that the game favors the away team but this has been dimissed by many and denied by PB.

Now that the season is done I decided to see how the games split between the home team and the visitors. Most leagues are done and I either did it today or not for awhile, so I'll accept that there may be some games unplayed as of this afternoon. It's a small percentage and shouldn't change the results. Here is what I found :
Home Away games
R1 21 3200
2 22 3200
3 51 3200
4 1 3200
5 60 3200
6 6 3200
7 2 3200
8 37 3200
9 58 3200
10 11 3200
11 34 3200
12 43 3200
13 7 3200
14 44 3200
15 68 3200
16 18 3200
17 4 3840
18 3 3840
Champ 88 3840
Chall 4 3840
98T1 11 3840
98T2 18 3840
99T1 10 3840
99T2 88 3840
99T3 78 3840
431 356 85760

If there were more home wins I put that difference in the home column, same with the away wins. 14 Out of 25 leagues had more home wins than away. 11 had the aways prevail. For all of the PB Trad leagues there were just 75 more home victories than away; this out of 85,760 games (.000875%). That comes out to 3 per league.

Does that seem right to you ? Not to me . I read somewhere and, please feel free to correct me or comment, that home teams win about 52% of the time. That would have been a difference of 3,430 games, not 75. There are a lot of inferences and conclusions you can come to from this data, and I'd be interested in yours, but to me it says that PB will tilt the results towards the visitors to balance out the natural advantage of batting last and managing your own team(especially the bullpen).

Either that or the Robot is MUCH smarter than we thought.

I haven't seen anything to change my mind this year and as was said in this thread, the visitors score a disproportionate amount of runs in the top of the first.