The Game 1 Advantage

The Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals and the open-roof jet stream at Miller Park combined for 15 runs in the opener of the NLCS (a 9-6 Milwaukee win), and the Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers and the rain cloud that follows Justin Verlander wherever he goes lately yielded a 3-2 Texas victory in the ALCS.

And so the American League and National League championship series have unfolded similarly: The home team won Game 1.

There is, of course, a self-evident advantage to winning Game 1: The team that takes the opener needs to play merely .500 ball during the remainder of the series in order to advance. The team that loses Game 1, meanwhile, must win at least four of six, which is — breaking news to follow — substantially more difficult. In fact, over the sprawling history of the seven-game series in baseball, the Game 1 winner takes the series a shade less than 66 percent of the time.

But what happens when, as in the cases of the Brewers and Rangers, the team that wins Game 1 is also the team in possession of home-field advantage? Is the distinction significant?

In the history of the best-of-seven League Championship Series (meaning from 1985 — when the LCS expanded from a best-of-five format to the current best-of-seven — through 2010), if the home team wins Game 1, then that team goes on to win the series 61.5 percent of the time. And in the history of the best-of-seven World Series (the 1903 and 1919-1921 seasons have been omitted because of the best-of-nine format, which is sadly no longer with us), the home team that wins Game 1 takes the entire affair 69 percent of the time.

So, for whatever reason(s), Game 1 outcomes are somewhat less predictive in the LCS than they are in the World Series and, by extension, the postseason as a whole. Why would this be the case? Answering this question is a speculative exercise.

Perhaps familiarity with the opposition and the opposition’s home park contributes to those compressed winning percentages? Perhaps it’s the similar roster construction (NL teams have no need to plan for the DH, and AL teams have no need to plan for batting the pitcher) that plays a role? Perhaps it’s the function of a limited sample size (just 26 series meet the criteria)?

Whatever the elements in play, combine the data pools (i.e., lump together all best-of-seven series) and the home team that wins the opener goes on to win the series 66.7 percent of the time, which is roughly the same percentage for all Game 1 winners. In other words, teams that win the series opener go on to win the whole thing about two-thirds of the time, regardless of whether it is the home or road team. It’s the mere winning of Game 1 that matters greatly, not where that win occurs.

Additionally, the value of winning Game 1 of a series is less in a seven-game series than in one with only five games. But even so, the Brewers and Rangers now have the advantage by jumping out to 1-0 starts, and they have the aforementioned odds in their favor.

Winning Game 1? A very good thing. Winning Game 1 as the home team? That’s irrelevant, as it turns out.