The Phillies have also tended to acquire fly ball-prone pitchers since they moved into Citizens Bank Park. Cory Lidle is one exception I can think of.

Think about it. I mean, a terrible team that plays much better at home definitely has a homefield advantage. The advantage might not mean that they will win most of their home games, but just playing at home results in a better winning percentage than playing on the road. Could be due to a lot of things.

However, the Phils have the worst homefield advanatge and I WANT TO KNOW WHY!!! Maybe it is the fans.

Looks like somebody else misread this piece.

http://www.ballssticksstuff.com/

Let me break this down a bit…

“The writer takes a look at the difference between home and road winning percentages and because the Phillies have the smallest in baseball, concludes that Phillies management is greedy, incompetent… well, you’ve heard it all before.”

I did not conclude that “the management is greedy, incompetent…” because the Phillies have the smallest differential winning percentage at home in all of baseball. I said it was one of the reasons for it and I was looking for others. In fact, I gave an excellent reason to show how incompetent our mamagement has been.

“Look, if that is your agenda, that’s fine, but there are other ways to make your argument. But pointing out that the Phillies have a .544 winning percentage at home and a .530 winning percentage on the road doesn’t make your case. It just shows that the Phillies, over the course of the season, have been consistently good at home and on the road [last two weeks notwithstanding].”

I didn’t make an argument that the Phillies have the lowest winning yadd yadda yadda. I supplied data that shows it is proof. There is no denying it. Phillies are the worst. And it isn’t even close. Is it a statistical anomoly? Could be, but when you are at the bottom and by quite a bit, then even a statistician doesn’t need to start looking at standard deviations and know that it is much more than an anomoly.

The Phillies have been a good team over the last 4 years. That actually DOES have an effect. How much of an effect, not much. As the team’s winning percentage approaches 1.000 the effect of homefield advantage will diminish to 0. Laws of physics and shit there. The average team wins about 8% more of it’s game at home. That ranges from Milwaukee who wins 17.7% more of it’s games at home to the Phils who win 1.4% more of it’s games at home. Is that within the expected range of error even when factoring that the Phils are a slightly above average team? Um, not even freakin close.

So, the Phils are an underperforming home team and it is likely due to reasons other than luck. The BP guys pointed at the possibility of the fans (which obviosuly was ignored by B,S&S), and I moved on the the possibility of management. Then I asked for more. Please, take time to read and use reason when analyzing the stuff here. Most of it isn’t hard if you take the time.

I think this statistic is a bit out of whack because we play exceptionally well on the road. We are the third best road team in the league, therefore, our differential is going to be skewed. However, I still tend to agree that we aren’t very good at home. I think this is because when we play on the road in more neutral ballparks (hitter/pitcher neutral), our offense can still shine while our pitchers are slightly benefited. Meanwhile, at home, scoring runs is a complete crap shot where any offense at any time can put up big numbers, especially against our pitching. I generally do not like to think that players are affected by fans whatsoever. In every sport I have ever played, neither my teammates or I gave a rat’s ass about the fan base.

Only the Angels and Yankees are better, but we play the AL so infrequently they don’t really matter. We are, by a wide margin, the best NL road team. But, if we’re that good on the road, you’d expect we’d be even that much better at home. Even getting us to within one standard deviation of the average for home/road difference would have put us in they playoffs another year or two over this time period.

That is one way of looking at it. Or, you could say that our record at home is who we truly are, and our road record is the mirage.

I made this post and decided to bump it because of the ridiculously extreme HOME/ROAD split this year.

HOME: 12-14
ROAD: 19-6

That may be the most ridiculoust split ever after the first 51 games of the year. I don’t have the…well, desire…to look that up, but someone who gets paid to do so should (I am looking at you Jayson Stark, if you are still alive).

I’d love to say we have faced weak competition on the road, but we haven’t.

Colorado
Washington X2
Florida
St. Louis
NY Mets
NY Yankees
Cincinnati
San Diego

.470

So, a tougher home schedule so far, but nothing overwhelmingly tough. Basically, the Phils have had a very easy first 51 games.

I just got to your article tonight (post-Lidge BS) and found the discussion intriguing – because the original premise seems to state by definition that the Phillies have the worst home field advantage because they have the smallest positive difference between their home and away records. The numbers speak for themselves, so there really is no argument , just a question of why. Where I think some dispute the premise is the fact that “homefield advantage” can also mean other general things at different times, such as who plays better at home, or who gets an extra game at home in a playoff series. The fact that 11 of those 29 teams with a better homefield advantage actually have a poorer winning percentage at home than the Phillies also seems to take some of the steam out of saying that the Phillies “are practically playing with no homefield advantage.” The numbers may say one thing overall, but I also remember last October when the team won all its home games. As to why the team might not fare better at home over the regular season, I would offer the possibility that the players do try to do too much, put too much pressure on themselves, in order to please the home crowd. Nothing I could point to with numbers, just a feeling from following this team for nearly 50 years.