Where Home Field Advantage Originates - Pitcher BABIP
At least in part:
In every year from 1995 to 2008 (and probably before - I didn’t bother going back any further once I found this obvious of a trend), the batting average of balls in play allowed by the home team’s pitchers was lower than the road team’s pitchers. The two lines generally move together, so when league BABIP is up or down, it’s up or down for both home and road in proportional amounts. But the home line never crosses the road line. It gets close in 2004, when the gap is just two points, but then diverges back to the more normal five to 10 point spread.
Over that 14 year period, home team BABIP allowed is .295, while road team BABIP allowed is .302. We’re talking millions of plate appearances here, so a seven point spread is certainly significant. It’s essentially impossible for this to happen randomly. There is something inherent to being the home team that allows you to reduce the amount of hits you allow on balls in play. This is, for lack of a batter term, a home field advantage.
8 months ago
larry
7 comments
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I posted this over at Fangraphs too
Depending on if they use ROE in their BABIP calcs (I assume they don’t) I would guess that some of it could be explained by home scorer bias calling more difficult balls in play errors for a home team pitcher and hits for an away team pitcher.
I actually haven’t seen anything on scoring bias in baseball (anyone have any links?), but there seems to be some in basketball with regards to assists scoring.
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by iamawesomer on Feb 26, 2009 12:25 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
i have this bookmarked from a few years back
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5546
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by larry on Feb 26, 2009 12:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
HFA Babip
Just some ideas.
1) Hitters being more familiar with the hitting background.
2) Fielders familiar with the field and fielding background.
by Xeifrank on Feb 26, 2009 12:25 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
Travel effects
Away team could be more worn out from travel. Could look to see what the Bapip is for the 1st game of series to last game.
by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Feb 26, 2009 12:27 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
and that
could tease out some of the familiarity issues Xeifrank points out
by Harry Pavlidis on Feb 26, 2009 2:00 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Much More than BABIP
http://www.thegoodphight.com/2008/7/3/564256/homefield-advantage
I did a serious study of homefield advantage which led to a discussion of a lot of these issues. BABIP is just the tip of the iceberg. Fielding is definitely an issue— the ratio of triples:doubles is very very different for home/away. Everything is better at home— SB%, pitchers hit more batters on the road, etc. Worth looking at & I summarized the results at the bottom.
by Matt Swartz on Mar 1, 2009 1:33 AM EST reply actions 0 recs









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