For a man who essentially makes his living repeatedly questioning the judgment of major league general managers and managers (for good reason; those decision makers act irrationally all the time), are you really in a position to assert that the importance of home field advantage in the playoffs must be minimal simply because teams "in position to determine their fate between a division title and a wild card" repeatedly "have behaved as if the difference between being a division titlist and a wild card means very little to them?" To be sure, you underlying premise may be correct. I just think it's silly to suggest that the best evidence of that is the actions of thosee teams. It's tantamount to arguing that bullpen usage dictated by the save statistic is good simply because major league managers almost universally act that way or that Juan Pierre is a great leadoff hitter because his managers repeatedly use in that spot.

There's an error in your chart. Though you may wish it, the Blue Jays and Yanks are not 4 and 5 games out in the division, they're the full 9 and 10 games out, same as your WC column.

The value of winning the East ... Both the Yankees and Red Sox lost three games to Cleveland in the playoffs last year ... The Yankees went home when they did and the Red Sox went on and won the World Series ...

I'm hoping for the Rays to win the remaining games in their series against Boston so that my Jays can, at the very least, have more control over their own destiny. They play seven more games against Boston and no more against Tampa Bay. In order to even have a remote chance at the wild card they need to basically run the table from here on out. They really can't lose more than two games and realistically those two losses can't come against the Red Sox.

I'm not saying that they have a good shot at a playoff spot at this point, but I like their chances more if Boston is in second simply because if they keep winning then hopefully a lot of those wins will be against one of the teams that they need to pass. For starters though they need to sweep this series in Chicago. Whether they make it or not they are playing the best baseball that they have during the J.P. Ricciardi regime at the moment so I'm hoping that they finish strong and win more games than they did in 2006. That would appear to be a reasonable goal for the team at this point.

The 100% number looks like a mistake; the Rays never really hit 100%.

If you look at the chart for the Rays, they go from 75% to win the division on Sept. 1 to 100% the following two days, then back to right around 75% on Sept. 4. This is not possible; you can't be 100% to win to many significant digits, then lose 25% of that overnight.

During the same time period, they bounce to 0% to win the wild card; same impossibility problem.

Even if you look at the totals, that's impossible - you're not going from 100.00000% to 99.59320% in one day; that's going from less than one in a million (the last digit applies to ties only, I think) to one in 250 in a day. The chances of the worst possible outcome - a Rays loss and everyone else winning - is far more than one in 4,000.

--JRM

I agree that luck is a big factor in the postseason, and that the "low seed" often wins in baseball. I don't agree that those facts justify writing off seeding considerations. You still want to maximize your chances, as best you can, of making it as far as you can. And I definitely feel that that goal is maximized if you play either the Twins or the Quentin-less White Sox in the first round, rather than the Angels. So, if I were the Rays, I'd care a great deal about whether I end up in front of Boston. Panicking won't help them accomplish that goal, obviously, but that's a different issue.

Yep. Get healthy in September, that's #1 for the Fishies.

"So the Red Sox win the division and only beat the Indians because they get the chance to play the Indians after losing three games to them while the Yankees never did get that chance after doing the same."

In 1985, the LCS went to 7 games for the first time. In the ALCS, Toronto went up 3-1 on KC. Under the old system, the Jays would have won the pennant.
There are a million arguments like this, which boil down to "if the circumstances had just been a little different, my team would have won."
Except the circumstances aren't different, and your team lost. Anything else is wishful thinking, especially if you're operating on the assumption that the Indians' downfall would have happened in the ALDS in a 7-game series. Yeah, and maybe if my Braves had won the pennant in '92, Joe Carter wouldn't have homered in Game 6, because he wouldn't have been facing Mitch Williams.
If, if, if . . . whatever helps you sleep at night.

Pretty much a good column here, especially with regard to the fact that sportswriters have felt the need to trumpet a mostly meaningless skid over the last few weeks as if they have no knowledge of baseball history. That said, jjgreen's comment is right on and needs to be addressed. The fact that teams don't care about winning the division vs. winning the wild card is evidence of nothing, the same as the fact that Joe Torre leads off Juan Pierre is not evidence that Pierre is good at it. Please, Mr. Sheehan, qualify your statement here.

Joe's column appears the same day that a writer for the St. Pete Times--John Romano--makes exactly the argument that Joe demolishes here. It's a very strange scolding of the home town team. http://www.tampabay.com/sports/baseball/rays/article802364.ece

As far as I can tell, there is an advantage to winning the division instead of the wild card. However, it's small enough that if you have that choice, you're better off trying to rest your team.

Home team advantage is about .540. In a 5-game series of equal teams, the home team should win about 50.8% of the time, as opposed to 49.2% by the wild card. The difference of .016 will affect about every 60th series.

It seems teams think they'd rather have a fresh team, and their optimal rotation than fight to the teeth for that last .008.

There's also the HUGE benefit of the possibility of the team making more money by having extra playoff games at their home stadium.

If last year's Red Sox won the World Series in the same number of games, but not had home field advantage, they would have played two less home games. That's 72,000 tickets sold at god-knows-how-much a pop. What's average face-value on playoff tickets? Over 100, one would assume. So it's 7 million dollars, or the price to pay a Boras-represented first round draft pick. And that's not even counting concession.

I'd imagine home-field advantage gave the Red Sox at least an extra 10 million. Not exactly chump change.

One very interesting thing about this article is Joe's assertion that home-field advantage matters more in the NBA and NFL. I don't doubt that he's right about that - I don't have the numbers in front of me and don't care enough about those two sports to look it up - but I do find it interesting that the NBA and NFL have a standardized playing field/court, while Baseball teams' home parks vary greatly in size, playing conditions (altitude), foul lines, etc. It's interesting because on the surface those things would suggest there's more of an advantage for baseball teams at home, since the football fields and basketball courts are always the same configuration.

As far as the playoffs go, baseball should - and I'm serious about this - go to best-of-7 playoff series and return to a best-of-nine World Series. The more games played the more often you can avoid statistical "blips" like St. Louis' 2006 Series Win or Houston's 2005 WS appearance.