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Le Grande Orange · 04-30-2003, 08:40 PM

I'd like to see home field advantage get put in. As it stands now, each team's home and away records are completely randomized; there is no appreciable benefit to playing at one's home park (other than for the revenue from attendance). This is rather unrealistic.

There is a definite home field advantage in baseball, and though the value is not huge, it is there. Over 80% of all MLB teams in the 20th century have finished with better home records than road records. You'll never see this in OOTP - the figure will be right around the 50% "random" value, which is far too low. As a result it means each team's home and away record is really meaningless.

The big question is how could this be factored in. Someone else had suggested simply raising the home team's batting a few points and lowering the batting of the visiting team's players a few points; this sounds like a workable solution to me. I'd suggest perhaps also including slightly better fielding for the home team players and slightly poorer fielding for the visiting team, since the home team will be far more familiar with their field's layout than the visiting team would (i.e. foul territory, the way a ball might bounce in the outfield corners, etc.)

The stats overall would still come out right, but now we'd at least get to see realistic looking home and away records each year, which is certainly not the case at present.

This more realistic home performance could have an affect on attendances as well. A mediocre team than can at least win a good number of games for the home town crowd might draw a little better than a similar team that just can't ever seem to win at home, for example.

I think it's time for the home field to get at least a little bit of the credit it deserves.

04-30-2003, 08:40 PM	#15 (permalink)
Le Grande Orange Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Scheduleslovakia Posts: 6,250	I'd like to see home field advantage get put in. As it stands now, each team's home and away records are completely randomized; there is no appreciable benefit to playing at one's home park (other than for the revenue from attendance). This is rather unrealistic. There is a definite home field advantage in baseball, and though the value is not huge, it is there. Over 80% of all MLB teams in the 20th century have finished with better home records than road records. You'll never see this in OOTP - the figure will be right around the 50% "random" value, which is far too low. As a result it means each team's home and away record is really meaningless. The big question is how could this be factored in. Someone else had suggested simply raising the home team's batting a few points and lowering the batting of the visiting team's players a few points; this sounds like a workable solution to me. I'd suggest perhaps also including slightly better fielding for the home team players and slightly poorer fielding for the visiting team, since the home team will be far more familiar with their field's layout than the visiting team would (i.e. foul territory, the way a ball might bounce in the outfield corners, etc.) The stats overall would still come out right, but now we'd at least get to see realistic looking home and away records each year, which is certainly not the case at present. This more realistic home performance could have an affect on attendances as well. A mediocre team than can at least win a good number of games for the home town crowd might draw a little better than a similar team that just can't ever seem to win at home, for example. I think it's time for the home field to get at least a little bit of the credit it deserves. __________________ . "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our abilities and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." .