Road Sweet Road?

Yesterday the post-season kicked off with 4 “wild card game 1” showdowns. Congratulations to the Tigers, Royals, Mets, and Padres for taking a 1-0 lead in their series. Only the Padres managed to win in front of their home crowd after the visiting teams opened the day 3-0.

This is not new, as the home teams have not fared especially well lately in post-season MLB. With the new format, increasing weight has been given to “home field advantage” with the best-of-3 wild card format yielding home games for all 3 awarded to the higher seed.

Any guesses as to why home teams, who are also higher seeds, are not enjoying more success? That is one open question I invite the community to discuss and analyze. I can offer only one possible explanation but it doesn’t apply across the board.

The Tigers-Astros game featured a Detroit team with a worse record overall than Houston, but arguably the best starting pitcher on any team in Tarik Skubal, who is the presumptive Cy Young award winner. On any given day, the “worse team, better SP” might be a favorite instead of an underdog. We will see if the Astros roar back in games 2 and 3 or whether the Tigers can keep road teams hot absent the Skubal card.

There is another format change that might impact results but we won’t know for a week or so. Remember that now the top 2 teams get a “bye” this round meaning they cannot be bounced in this first round. This year’s patient observers are the Yankees, Guardians, Dodgers, and Phillies.

However, there is a price to pay for automatically advancing to the ALDS/ALCS and that is several days off out of routine. All starting pitchers will be on unusually long rest and hitters will have to try to regain their timing against elite pitchers having not taken a single live at bat in October until game 1.

Is this a disadvantage worth worrying about? Another question to ponder out loud in the comments. As for this post-season, this particular Blogfather finds himself rooting currently for the Tigers to bounce the Trashstros and for the relatively likeable Brewers and Padres. Moving forward, he will adopt Stephen Vogt’s Guardians and will root passionately for whoever is playing the Yankees. How about you?

OK, there’s 3 questions to consider as you either watch or ignore game 2, game 2, game 2, and game 2 to see who will Walz, I mean adVance — wait, sorry, no politics. Happy Wednesday!