Homeground Advantage in the ABL

After quite a bit of discussion lately about the variations between ballparks in the ABL, I thought it would be interesting to look at homeground advantages. I've previously asserted that teams with batter friendly ballparks, such as Melbourne and Adelaide, know how to take advantage of their own field. Based on all ABL games to date I determined the winning percentages of teams at home and on the road:

Team	Home Record	Away Record	Difference (Home – Away)
Adelaide Bite	0.667	0.375	0.292
Brisbane Bandits	0.500	0.481	0.019
Canberra Cavalry	0.542	0.158	0.384
Melbourne Aces	0.500	0.346	0.154
Sydney Blue Sox	0.500	0.481	0.019
Perth Heat	0.522	0.800	-0.278

All teams, with the exception of Perth, seem to have a homeground advantage (e.g. have a better record at home than away) - but to greatly varying degrees. The discrepancy regarding Perth is likely due to their current domination of the competition, winning the title last year and starting this year with a currently unbroken eleven game winning streak.

In a previous blog looking at batting park factors, I objectively established that the ballparks in Melbourne, Adelaide, and Canberra favoured batters. Conversely, in Brisbane, Sydney, and Perth the pitchers are much more dominant. Interestingly, these two groups of teams reoccur when looking at homeground advantages:

Team	Percentage Improvement at Home	BPF
Canberra Cavalry	243%	114
Adelaide Bite	78%	116
Melbourne Aces	44%	156
Brisbane Bandits	4%	63
Sydney Blue Sox	4%	96
Perth Heat	-35%	69

While multiple factors may account for what level of homeground advantage a team experiences, the effect displayed above is simply too distinct to ignore. It appears that teams with batter friendly ballparks have a significant homeground advantage, while teams with pitcher friendly ballparks seem to have a negligible homeground advantage.

Hence, my hypothesis that teams in smaller ballparks learn how to exploit the advantages (as discussed in my last blog on Simon Morriss) appears to hold true.