Major League Baseball

World Series 2021: Is playing at home still a clear advantage?

Published Oct. 28, 2021 7:57 p.m. ET

By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

We all like being at home, don’t we?

Perhaps more than ever, we are working from home, shopping from home, spending most of our time at home, buying new homes, decorating our home and just being, in many cases, happier at home than any other place.

In sports, home is where the heart is, right? For the longest time in our favorite leagues and competitions, playing at home came with not just the benefit of comfort, but with a greatly enhanced probability of success.

But things are a little different now. Across sports, there is evidence things are a-changing, at least for now and maybe forever. There is a multitude of numbers to crunch, and we’ll get to the crunching shortly, but most of them suggest being a road warrior is no longer the kind of uphill struggle it once was.

The Atlanta Braves, however, hope the old way persists for a little bit longer.

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With the World Series delicately poised at 1-1, but the Houston Astros coming off a surge in momentum after dominating Wednesday night’s Game 2, 7-2, common opinion suggests the Braves need to either finish things off at home over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, or at least come away with a pair of victories and a slender advantage heading back to Houston.

"Realistically, you want to win (the first) two games of the series," Braves manager Brian Snitker said on Wednesday night. "But if you can split and get out of here and go home, where we've been really good, that's a positive."

During the regular season, Atlanta held an unremarkable home record of 42-38, but has caught fire at Truist Park recently. The Braves have won 10 of their last 11 at home, going a perfect 5-0 in the postseason.

"You got to say Atlanta has the edge in Atlanta, but when you are facing a team like Houston anything can happen," Hall of Famer and FOX Sports MLB Analyst Frank Thomas said. "Atlanta will feel a little more pressure at home, but we see that crowd in Atlanta, the edge will go … to them."

FOX Sports colleague Alex Rodriguez insisted on the broadcast that the Braves are well set up to secure at least two games at home and move the franchise to within a single victory of its first title since 1995. Right-hander Ian Anderson will start Game 3 on Friday (8:09 p.m. ET on FOX), while ace Max Fried could return on short rest for Game 5. Luis Garcia will try to throw fire for the Astros in Friday’s matchup.

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For Houston, it has been the Michael Brantley show through two games in this series and throughout the entire playoffs. The Astros’ star outfielder is hitting .352 this postseason and has two hits in each of the first two games of this World Series matchup.

On the other side, all eyes will be on five-time All-Star Freddie Freeman, who is chasing that elusive first World Series ring, as well as outfielder Eddie Rosario, who has been nothing short of spectacular throughout this postseason.

Yet while the Braves would certainly rather be facing three home games than not, it is hard to know what’s what these days.

Being at home is still a clear advantage. Or is it? Some peculiar things have been happening, both in baseball and elsewhere.

Houston’s win at Minute Maid Park was the first time since Game 3 of the 2018 World Series that the home team had prevailed, breaking a streak of 10 road victories and last year’s COVID-enforced neutral site games.

In the National Football League, the oddsmakers typically skew their lines based on who is at home, but that trust hasn’t paid off recently. Home teams are just 53-54 this season, similar to the 127-128-1 record from last year, an all-time low.

A reduction in fans due to COVID may have been part of the reason, though other factors such as better officiating and enhanced travel and sleep may have led to better road performances.

The NBA is typically home-court heavy, but in the early stages of the current campaign, home teams have won just 30 out of 64 times, going into Thursday’s games.

Amid all that equality, this MLB postseason has been somewhat of an outlier, with home teams sporting a 22-11 record to date. Amid so much conflicting data though, would you be brave enough to put your faith in that trend holding up – and in the Braves?

FOX Bet has Atlanta listed at -115 for Game 3, almost identical to Houston’s price of -105.

"Playoff numbers don’t matter," Astros star José Altuve said. "You have to stay positive you have to wait until your time has come and that’s the way we all are. We are thinking about winning. We are going to go to Atlanta and win as many games as possible."

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.