Deciding World Series Home Field Advantage

Deciding World Series Home Field Advantage

 The All Star Game is coming up soon and even though it’s just a fun exhibition game it does count for something – the winning team gets World Series home field advantage for their league. Bud Selig introduced this to try to add some more buzz to the ASG. It’s been like this over 10 years and I don’t think it’s really added any interest or intensity to the ASG. The game is still played like it’s an exhibition game.

 I think we should abandon using the ASG to decide World Series home advantage. I don’t think it’s really fair to disadvantage a team just because the league it’s in lost an exhibition game in July. Previous to using the ASG to decide World Series HFA they used to alternate HFA between the leagues. That’s even but not really fair – under the old rules SF would have been disadvantaged in 2010 and 2012 (although neither series went the distance anyway).

 Admittedly HFA in the World Series doesn’t make a huge difference – since they used the ASG to decide HFA, only one series (2011) has gone to a game 7 anyway. But it still matters, even if it usually doesn’t.

 You could use the teams overall record – the team that has the better season record gets the advantage. It’s not perfect since teams don’t play the same schedule – one team might have played in a weak division in the weaker league – but it would still be a fine method to use.

 But I propose we use something else to decide World Series HFA. There are 300 interleague games scheduled this year (each team plays 20 games). The league that has the better record gets the HFA in the World Series. This is fairer since the league that does better in interleague is arguably the better league so the team that makes the World Series had a harder road and thus deserves HFA.

 One of the problems with interleague play is that, outside of playing your rivals (e.g. Dodgers-Angels, White Sox and Cubs, Yankees-Mets) these matchups mean very little since you aren’t competing against these teams for finals spots. If you play teams within your own league they are your own competitors, even more so with teams in your own division.

 With this system it adds a little more importance to interleague games – they do mean a little bit more. Also it adds a little to the contest in that you are representing your league against the other league and fighting for a real prize. MLB could keep a counter on their homepage and it would be meaningful and maybe add some interest to interleague. You might have people keeping an eye on the boxscores of interleague games their teams aren’t even involved in, especially if their team is likely going to the playoffs. It could get very interesting if records are close going into the last few days or weeks.

 If at the end of the season the record is tied at 150-150, the result of the ALG game could be used as the tiebreaker. A tie wouldn’t happen often – in 16 years of interleague play there’s never been a tie. Admittedly this wouldn’t add any interest to the ASG since it’s played midway through the year. If we had done this in previous years the AL would’ve had HFA in the last 9 World Series.