Atlanta Braves and the home field advantage for 2020
Looking deeper, the 2020 schedule has unique quirks; can the Atlanta Braves overcome them?
Historically, MLB home teams have an inherent advantage, and our Atlanta Braves have enjoyed this advantage as well.
Apart from the obvious things like being comfortable with your home park’s sightlines and special features, home teams will usually spend about a week’s worth of consecutive games without having to travel, while their opponents have had to travel into town, handle the unfamiliar hotels and transportation, and then deal with locally hostile fans.
Across major league baseball, the home team has enjoyed between a .528 and .541 win percentage in all games against all matchups since the 2015 season began.
Oddly enough, 2019 had a bit of a departure from this norm: a .529 win% was maintained despite home teams not outscoring the opposition for the only time since 1999.
That makes this newly-released 2020 schedule all the more interesting to try and decipher how much this home-field “advantage” can be maintained in a world without fans.
There’s also this: rather than resolving the problem of dividing 10 intra-divisional matchups into 5 home and 5 road games, MLB opted to go for the more convenient 6/4 (and even 7/3!) home/road splits, which comes with less travel overall and fewer 2 game sets.
The kind of unbalanced schedule means that every club will have a couple of home game advantages and a couple of home game deficits.
Let’s see how that breaks down for the NL East:
BRAVES
· Advantages: Marlins (7 home games out of 10), Nats (6)
· Disadvantages: Mets (4 home games), Phillies (3)
MARLINS
· Advantages: Nats (6), Phils (7)
· Disadvantages: Braves (3), Mets (6)
METS
· Advantages: Braves (6), Marlins (6)
· Disadvantages: Nats (6), Phils (6)
PHILLIES
· Advantages: Braves (7), Mets (6)
· Disadvantages: Nats (6), Marlins (7)
NATIONALS
· Advantages: Mets (6), Phils (6)
· Disadvantages: Marlins (6), Braves (6)
Then there’s the matchups against the American League teams from the AL East. You’d figure that with 20 games, they’d divvy that up as 4 games against each member. But then you’d be wrong … as I was.
Atlanta faces the Orioles and Jays just three times apiece (a possible disadvantage for them). They get the Yankees and Rays 4 times each, broken up as 2 road/2 home series.
Finally, it’s the Red Sox for a daunting 6 games (3 at each venue). Then again, will the Red Sox be that tough this year? Hard to gauge so far.
The Mets draw the short straw, and therefore get the fun task of playing the Yankees six times. Washington drew the Orioles for their AL East 6-pack, so that should give them a strong advantage.
Conventional thinking suggests that any club getting off to a strong start might be tough to catch. Atlanta starts with the Mets, Rays, Mets again, and the Blue Jays. On the whole, that seems relatively balanced.
If they need to come up with a last-minute surge, then the Orioles, Mets, Nats (two sets), Marlins (two sets), and Red Sox (two sets) will be the opponents for the month of September.
So how many wins will it take to win the NL East? 35? 37? It’s a tough question, but based on the schedule, the Braves have no serious downsides, though the Nationals might have the ultimate advantage: more games vs. Baltimore (6) and their Yankee matches (only 3 games) are done quickly.
Next. It's time for Fried. dark
From here, it still looks to be a dogfight for the top spot and a Wild Card berth will be tough to claim if the division isn’t taken outright. So it will be important to keep everyone healthy and productive throughout this very odd 2020 season.