Quote:
Originally Posted by Kemp
But the questions are:
1. How much of that advantage is due to the fact that the home team bats last?
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None, and it might even be an advantage to bat first, though it's so close to zero it's almost certainly a wash. See my recent paper in Journal of Quantitative Analysis in sports for a literature survey, data, and some theoretical calculations.
Interesting fact: the longer a game goes in terms of innings, the more likely the visiting team is to win. This isn't compelling evidence one way or the other -- it's probably just a selection bias, because, since there is a HFA, the fact that the game goes to extra innings suggests the visiting team is probably stronger. But, it's the opposite of what we'd expect to see if having last ups were decisive.