I want to talk about home field advantage for the World Series.

Under its current format, home field is determined by the winner of the All Star game, typically played in mid July. Why?

It doesn’t make sense. Why not award home field to the team with the best record, like every other professional sports league? Both the NBA and NHL award home field (or home ice) to the team with the best regular season record.

Diving into the numbers, we find that the team with the best record has had homefield advantage all but twice.

You mean to tell me, that in the last 12 years, with this strange system of determining home field advantage, it has worked out all but two times? How is this possible? This must be happenstance. Surely, the trend will be broken eventually. Let’s take this year for example: The Kansas City Royals finished the regular season with a record of 95-67, and will have home field advantage because the American League won the All Star Game by a final score of 6-3. The New York Mets, on the other hand, have a record of 90-72…shoot.

No matter! The system for determining home field advantage is dumb. Who cares if it has worked out the way it should have 10 out of the last 13 years? Are you telling me the Texas Rangers wouldn’t have rather played game 7 at home in Arlington, instead of on the road in St. Louis? And in 2004…well, forget about 2004. 2004 was the year the Red Sox battled back from three games down against the Yankees, then went on to sweep the Cardinals.

Home field should automatically be given to the team with the best record. If there is a tie (a la 2013) then give it to the All Star Game winner, or the team with the best run differential, or most runs scored, literally any metric you want. Just stop having the All Star game be the deciding factor in home field advantage.

– AJ Schofield, Sports & Opinion Editor