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Game 4, 5:07 pm Fox. Royals lead 2-1
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Chris Young
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Steven Matz
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| Alcides Escobar - SS | Curtis Granderson - RF |
| Ben Zobrist - 2B | David Wright - 3B |
| Lorenzo Cain - CF | Daniel Murphy - 2B |
| Eric Hosmer - 1B | Yoenis Cespedes - CF |
| Mike Moustakas - 3B | Lucas Duda - 1B |
| Salvador Perez - C | Travis d'Arnaud - C |
| Alex Gordon - LF | Michael Conforto - LF |
| Alex Rios - RF | Wilmer Flores - SS |
| Chris Young - RHP | Steven Matz - LHP |
If the Mets win tonight, then we'll officially have ourselves an entirely new World Series, with things then being tied back up, and New York having a chance to complete the sweep at home tomorrow. So far, all three games have gone to the home team, which perhaps reminds Arizona fans of our victorious title run, when all seven games in the 2001 World Series were won by the home team. Fortunately, this was back before the crappy idea of "this time it counts", because the American League won the All-Star Game that summer - it might have changed history forever if the Yankees had home-field advantage that fall.
But how important is that? Since the Diamondbacks came into existence, there have been a total of 93 World Series games, including the three played this season. The home team is 59-34 in those, which is a robust .634 winning percentage, significantly above the 2015 home winning percentage across all of baseball, sitting 93 points lower at only .541. Interestingly, that advantage only seems to apply when it's all on the line. over the 204 Championship Series games, home teams are 116-88, a .569 percentage much closer to the regular season. And in the Division Series, it's only 149-140, which is actually less than the regular season record, at a W% of only .516.
It's certainly possible to imagine the home crowd being a lot more "into" a game during the World Series, adding a boost of morale to the home team, and intimidating the opposition. That effect may be more pronounced in baseball, where the regular season involves 81 home games - even the most enthusiastic of fans is going to be hard pushed to have their game face on for all of those! But when the post-season comes around and your team has perhaps a once in a generation chance to take it all... Yeah, it's not hard to be fully engaged for that. We'll see if the Citi Field advantage holds true for the Mets tonight.