Home field advantage

[Knerrpool]

Other than the fact that you can select players suited to your particular stadium, and that you have the last at bat, is there anything built into the game that favors the home team or gives the home team an advantage? Thanks.

[LMBombers]

The best home field advantage you can have is to build your team to best suit your stadium. However there is supposed to be some tiny home field advantage that is built in to the game but is never exactly spelled out anywhere how this works by TSN/SOM. I have seen plenty of teams with bad home field records so this very small hidden advantage isn't anything to worry about IMO.

[JOSEPHKENDALL]

You can find the home field advantage information at this site:

http://somonline.bluwiki.com/go/Maximum_rule:_Home_field_advantage

[gbrookes]

In my experience so far, I have seen (typically) a fairly big difference in home records vs road records. Based on the previous posts, this seems like a pretty strong endorsement for the effects of strategy that you can apply in building a team to suit your ballpark!!!!

:)

Geoff Brookes

[JdEarly]

The only home field advantage that I'm aware of is the obvious advantage of tailoring your roster to fit your park. A team full of right handed power hitters who depend on the ballpark are going to have a tough time in Safeco, for example, so don't spend too much on them in your draft. Other than the park/roster compatability, I really can't see any other advantage from playing at home.

[gbrookes]

- see Joe Kendall's post above re an actual increase in batting avg. for the home team.

[crs76]

A few years ago I added up the stats for the whole league for a few of my seasons and confirmed that the home team hit .010 better than the visiting team. Also seem to remember the home team having the edge in doubles and homeruns.

[apolivka]

Frankly, I wish the HFA advanced rule was optional, or at least explained in a way that was easy to understand.

For example, if it said something like "all Ball Park Singles are increased by two points for the home team" or something like that, I don't think I would have a problem with it. Every home team would get a slight explainable advantage. And it IS an advantage to hit at home. You know the park, the batter's eye, the lighting, etc. much better.

But the nebulous stuff like "these changes occur "behind the scenes" as random numbers are rolled and compared to statistical probabilities, only "kicking in" in a relatively few instances" drives me nuts. When does it "kick in"??? What "random numbers" are involved???

I don't like any of the black box Maximum Rules. I think they are really there for the PC game to create ultra realistic stats for players. Things like runs scored and RBIs. Since we are really playing imaginary seasons anyway, those kind of adjustments are really NOT WANTED or necessary. I think most online players would agree.

[TomSiebert]

a - I agree w/ apolivka

b - I was glad to see the "Max Rules" link, because it alerted me that the "Rob HR" link isn't turned on. I'd been using top defensive RF's on teams when I drafted Bartolo Colon, because I figured they'd save a couple HRs over the course of a season. Not so, it turns out. Bummer.

tws

[apolivka]

When we used to play face-to-face leagues with my friends in school, we used to roll for the weather. If you rolled a 20 it was "strong wind blowing out" and you added +5 to every home run split. :) We also had rolls for the wind blowing in and rainouts.

That's the kind of maximum rule that are fun!