Home-field Advantage
Home teams have won about 52% of extra-inning games in the last 50 years. During this same time period, home teams have won about 54% of all baseball games. So while the home team has some advantage in extra-inning games, this advantage is less noticeable than the initial home-field advantage. Home teams tend to have the greatest advantage in run-scoring during the first 3 innings.
For the visiting team to win, it must score as many runs as possible in the first (or "top") half of the inning and then prevent the home team from tying or taking the lead in the bottom half. Because it bats in the second (or "bottom") half of an inning, a home team wins the game immediately by taking the lead at any point in the final inning; each extra inning simply repeats this scenario. A home run in such a situation is called a walk-off home run, and any win in this situation is known as a walk-off win.
Read more about this topic: Extra Innings
Famous quotes containing the word advantage:
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)