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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

A bit of a shameless plug, but a few years ago I Googled for scientific and statistical analyses of home field advantage and didn't find anything, so I ended up crunching the numbers for myself.

With the caveat that this is for baseball and not football, home field advantage has shrunk tremendously over the years. Just look at the curve of "field kindness" over the history of the MLB, it is insane how much of a difference the field you were visiting used to make!

https://neosmart.net/blog/2016/homefield-advantage/

(my favorite bit is the curve ball when it comes to fields that confer a statistical advantage to the visiting team!)

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The rules of the game of baseball lend themselves to home team advantage where the order of team at-bats and substitution rules heavily favor the home team from a strategic standpoint if players are effectively deployed.

Park dimensions + team makeup is a combination that can contribute heavily to home team advantage. The short porches in Yankee Stadium (especially in right) have traditionally granted an advantage to the Yankees' often left handed sluggers. The more the field dimensions vary from the norm, the more the home team has an advantage to tailor their team makeup to exploit them. Parks with high walls, short porches, heavy prevailing winds, deep outfield fences, or absurd dimensions ( Think Willie Mays fielding center at the Polo Grounds) all present opportunities for exploitation.

While the Astros had more wins on the road than at home during the regular season from 2017-2019, their 2017 postseason home/away batting splits were wildly inconsistent. Boston had the best home record in MLB by six games during the 2018 season in which they were found to be relaying signals to batters. I'd suggest that home field presents a greater opportunity for outright cheating as well.

tbh, I don't really understand why Coors would be such an advantage. It's not like the visiting team doesn't also benefit from the additional ball flight.

Do you think it has to do with roster building? Like the Rockies don't spend money on pitching because pitching has less value at Coors, so they load up on offensive talent instead?

On average, Rockies players are better acclimated to playing at altitude; consider that they sometimes play back to back home series against different teams, while visiting teams play at most one consecutive series in Denver. This is why visiting teams tend to send their expected starting pitcher to Colorado a couple days early.

In addition to farther fly ball flight, the thinner air in Coors Field lessens the amount of distance a breaking ball moves when pitched. You'd think they would spend top dollar for every pitcher with a heavy 94+ mph sinker.

While other teams play a single (or handful of) series a year at Coors Field, the Rockies have to adjust to breaking pitches being more effective while playing away half the time which would be a bigger disadvantage than the ball not flying as far at away ballparks.

random speculation. Could cheating in ways you can only do at home contributed? Not sure how you could test it. but would be interesting

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