2013 WS Game 6: 2013 Topps #527 Carlos Beltran

It has been noted that the St Louis Cardinals are up against a bit of history as they hit the Road to face the Red Sox in Boston for game 6 (and possibly 7) of the 2013 World Series.

Several sports outlets have noted the last team to take games 6 and 7 on the road is the 1979 Pirates. One knows that is a long time ago - #1 because the Pirates were involved and #2 The calendar tells us that it has been 33 years.

There is a bit of an illusion in that 33 years. The Cardinals aren’t really up against a phenomenon that only occurs once every three decades – Not all World Series find the Away team down 3-2 after 5.

2013 Carlos Beltran #527 Carlos Beltran (Green Parallel)

Lets take a look at what Carlos Beltran and the Cardinals are up against. Since the Pirates 1979 comeback v the Orioles there have been six teams that faced the same odds as the Cardinals (down 3-2 needing 2 Road Wins). A closer look at those teams provides the following:

As you can see the team that came the closest to the double road gm comeback was the 1997 Indians. In fact they came within a Save opportunity by Jose Mesa of being World Champs. The other 5 contenders all bowed out in game 6 - with 2 of those 5 being Phillies teams, including the Joe Carter game.

To me it is worth noting if you have 2 evenly matched teams the odds of either one winning back/back games is 1 in 4. The down 3-2 on the road scenario has only happend 6 times. This leads me down the small sample route - it hasn't happened in 33 years simply because it the opportunity doesn't occur that often (except to the Phillies). A probability person may conjecture that the Cardinals Winning the 2013 World Series is expected, it is just evening out the odds (or returning to the mean)

2013 PostSeason Cardinals
Matt Adams
Lance Lynn
Michael Wacha 
Adam Wainwright
Orlando Cepeda


2013 PostSeason Red Sox
Clay Buchholz
David Ortiz
Dustin Pedroia 
Shane Victorino

Carl Yastrzemski
Jose Iglesias (Now with Tigers)

Sources
baseball-ref.com 

All-Star Game Debriefing - Does Home Field Advantage Matter?

Prior to this week, the last time the All-Star Game was held in New York the NL took the loss 4-3 in a 15 inning epic that ended on a sac fly by Michael Young off of Phillies closer Brad Lidge.

2008 Topps #UH304 Brad Lidge (stolen from Trading Card Database)


Since 2003 the All-Star game has decided home field advantage in the World Series. Lidge couldn't know it at the time, but the NLs loss would cost the Phillies Home Field in the 2008 World Series. Fortunately for him the Phils and their fans like myself, The Phils took one game in Tampa and all 3 of their home games and didn't need HFA to win the 08 series.

Fox was throwing around some stat about how often the World Series was won by the home team. I wanted to look deeper into this and find out if the Home Team won or perhaps it worked out that the Home Team was the better team.  Here is what we found.

Year	Away	G>.500	Home	G>.500	Len	Home W Diff	Home Team Wins	Best Rec Wins	Home + Best Rec	Away + Best Rec	Home Worse Rec	Away +worse Rec
2012	Tigers	14	Giants	26	4	12	1	1	1	0	0	0
2011	Rangers	30	Cardinals	18	7	-12	1		0	0	1	0
2010	Rangers	18	Giants	22	5	4	1	1	1	0	0	0
2009	Phillies	24	Yankees	44	6	20	1	1	1	0	0	0
2008	Phillies	22	Rays	32	6	10	0		0	0	0	1
2007	Rockies	17	Red Sox	30	4	13	1	1	1	0	0	0
2006	Cardinals	5	Tigers	28	5	23	0		0	0	0	1
2005	Astros (NL)	16	White Sox	36	4	20	1	1	1	0	0	0
2004	Cardinals	48	Red Sox	34	4	-14	1		0	0	1	0
2003	Marlins	20	Yankees	40	6	20	0		0	0	0	1
2002	Giants	29	Angels	36	7	7	1	1	1	0	0	0
2001	Yankees	30	Diamond Backs	22	7	-8	1		0	0	1	0
2000	Mets	26	Yankees	23	5	-3	1	1	1	0	0	0
1999	Yankees	34	Braves	44	4	10	1		0	0	1	0
1998	Padres	34	Yankees	56	4	22	1	1	1	0	0	0
1997	Indians	11	Marlins	22	7	11	1	1	1	0	0	0
1996	Braves	30	Yankees	22	6	-8	1		0	0	1	0
1995	Indians	56	Braves	46	6	-10	1		0	0	1	0
1994
1993	Phillies	32	Blue Jays	28	6	-4	1		0	0	1	0
1992	Blue Jays	30	Braves	34	6	4	0		0	0	0	1
1991	Braves	26	Twins	28	7	2	1	1	1	0	0	0
1990	Athletics	44	Reds	20	4	-24	1		0	0	1	0
1989	Giants	22	Athletics	36	4	14	1	1	1	0	0	0
1988	Athletics	46	Dodgers	27	5	-19	1		0	0	1	0
1987	Cardinals	28	Twins	8	7	-20	1		0	0	1	0
1986	Red Sox	29	Mets	54	7	25	1	1	1	0	0	0
1985	Cardinals	40	Royals	20	7	-20	1		0	0	1	0
1984	Tigers	46	Padres	22	5	-24	0	1	0	1	0	0
1983	Phillies	18	Orioles	34	5	16	1	1	1	0	0	0
1982	Brewers (AL)	28	Cardinals	22	7	-6	1		0	0	1	0
1981	Dodgers	16	Yankees	11	6	-5	0	1	0	1	0	0
1980	Royals	22	Phillies	20	6	-2	1		0	0	1	0
1979	Pirates	34	Orioles	45	7	11	0		0	0	0	1
							26	15	13	2	13	5
	Away	G>.500	Home	G>.500		Home Diff	Home	Rec	Home+Rec	Away+Rec	Home-Rec	Away-Rec

The Chart goes back 33 World Series and list the team that ended up being Away and Home for the Series - the team in Green won the series. 7 Game series are noted in yellow.

The G>.500 is the number of games each squad finished above .500.  The Len column is the length of the series. Home Diff is the number of games the Home squad was ahead or behind the away team.  

To the right of the chart a A '1' in a column indicates a win in a certain category. Those catgories and composite records are as follows

Home Team 26-7 
Better Record 15-18

Better Record + Home 13-5
Better Record + Away 2-13
Worse Record + Home  13-2  
Worse Record + Away 5-13 

There are 2 things worth noting here, 33 series is not a huge sample size, but it isn't small.  The second is that the best team doesn't always have the best record.  And indeed it does seem to be the hotter team has been winning Series recently.

I will admit those two issues with the study here, but there are some astounding numbers. 
1) The 2-13 record of teams w/ better records w/ Road Status. Thats abysmal. In fact it is worse than being the Away Squad and having the worse record in the contest (5-13)
2) I went back to 1979 just so I could find a game 7 that was won by the road squad.  There have been 9 Game 7s since then, every single one of them won by the Home team. Assuming both teams are near equal the odds of 9 home consecutive home wins is over 500-1.      

Source
Baseball-ref.com