As baseball and softball playoffs begin, home teams have clear advantage

Under the current format, 256 baseball and softball teams from around the state qualify for the SCHSL playoffs each year.

There are 128 first-round games, and technically every team has the same mathematical chance at winning a state tournament. That is, until you factor in talent, performance throughout the regular season, gelling near the end of the season and, of course, home-field advantage.

As the 2015 baseball and softball playoffs begin Thursday and Friday, a look at last year’s brackets shows a clear distinction in teams that opened at home and those who had to hit the road. Not only did home teams win the majority of their first-round games. Nearly all of the teams who won their four-team district playoffs and advanced to the Lower State or Upper State brackets were one or two seeds.

In 2014, the home team won 94 of the 128 first-round games in the state’s baseball and softball tournaments across all four classes. The teams who finished in the top two of their region over the course of the regular season and earned the accompanying first-round home games had a significant statistical advantage – to the tune of 73.4 percent.

“I’m a math guy,” St. James baseball coach Robbie Centracchio said. “I think every coach is going to pick being a one or two seed. But there are years you don’t want to match up with a certain team. Matchups are big, too.

“If you have a team getting hot at the end of the year and grab that three or four seed, they could [win games].”

Centracchio said being able to schedule your own routine and keep your players in their own comfort zone is big. He said the biggest problem with going on the road is adjusting to aspects of a game a high school athlete can’t control, be it a quirk in a field, an umpire “leaning a certain way” or even sitting on a bus for an extended period of time.

After correctly estimating that home teams win about three-quarters of the games in the early rounds of the playoffs, he also stated that the overall numbers reflect even more about the best teams.

Not so surprisingly, those also tend to be the ones with a No. 1 or 2 seed next to their name.

Of the 32 baseball and softball teams who advanced to Lower States in 2014, 18 spots were taken up by No. 1 seeds and nine more were earned by No. 2 seeds. That left just five spots – in two sports across four classes each – for teams who failed to finish in the top two of their regular-season region standings.

The last two area teams to make the Lower State tournament after finishing third or lower in their region both came in 2013. That year, Green Sea-Floyds softball made it as a No. 3 seed, while Loris baseball made it as a No. 4.

Centracchio’s St. James team did it in 2009 as a No. 3 seed, but he also recognizes that was an anomaly based upon the format used by the South Carolina High School League.

“If it was a single elimination tournament, yeah [more upsets would happen],” he said. “But in double-elimination, the best team is going to win whether they’re at home or on the road.”

This story was originally published April 29, 2015 at 6:44 PM with the headline "As baseball and softball playoffs begin, home teams have clear advantage."