The All-Star Farce

The All-Star game gets a lot of criticism, most of it justified. The criticism that I would like to tackle, is that of the winning league of the All-Star game receiving home field advantage in the World Series. The commissioners office has two objectives to meet here. The first off is to make the All-Star game more "meaningful". The second, is to assign home field advantage in the World Series in an equitable way.

I am resigned to the fact that there may be no perfect way to assign home field advantage in the World Series. Each method has it's flaws, none as bad as the travesty that college football uses to determine who plays in it's National Championship game.

The most commonly mentioned methods for determining home field advantage in the All-Star game are...
1) The team with the best regular season record.
2A) The team with the best interleague record.
2B) The league with the best interleague record.
3) Alternating between leagues every year.
4) The league that wins the All-Star game.
5) Some variation of item #1, in which strength of schedule and or pythagorean record is taken into account.

The problem with using the best regular season record is that not all teams play the same strength of schedule, and that one could argue that all teams in the American League play against tougher competition than National League teams do. A variation of best record that takes into consideration strength of schedule and or pythagorean record would be more fair, but would also alienate most of the fans due to it's complexity.

A system using best interleague record is fraught with errors due to small sample size and often teams are matched up playing all or most of their interleague games vs one division in the opposite league. This is not fair to teams that play a tougher set of interleague games. A better way to measure which league is stronger based on actual games played, is to look at how each league as a whole did in interleague games.

Alternating between NL and AL every other year does a good job of splitting the home field advantage evenly between the two leagues, but does little to reward the team that won more games during the regular season.

Using the winner of the All-Star game to determine which league gets the home field advantage in the World Series is fatally flawed because the All-Star game itself is an exhibition, played with a different set of rules and limitations on players, and a flawed system for determining which players make up the All-Star teams. Think about this, what motivation do players on the Washington Nationals, San Diego Padres or Oakland A's have for winning the All-Star game? None, other than pride. If the All-Star game by itself is going to determine the home field advantage then only the most deserving players should be selected. Fans should have no say in who plays in the All-Star game. If the All-Star game is "for the fans", then don't also make it "for home field advantage" in the World Series.

So this begs the question, then what is the best or most fair way to determine home field advantage in the World Series, all the while making the All-Star game somewhat meaningful? My solution is that you use a combination of three of the items listed above. When the two teams qualify for the World Series, then you look at which league won the All-Star game, which of the two teams have the best overall record, and which league had the better interleague record.

For example in 2008, the Rays played the Phillies in the World Series, and the Rays had home field advantage due to the fact that the American League won the All-Star game. Under my system, you run through a quick three item checklist, awarding one point to the team or league that won that item.

Checklist
1) Which league won the All-Star game?
2) Which league had a better record during interleague play?
3) Which team had the better regular season record?

The Rays would've won all three items listed above. Headed into the All-Star break this year, the American League has already clinched the best record during interleague play, so a win in the All-Star game would clinch home field advantage in the World Series. A win by the National League, would make the best overall record of the two teams qualifying for the World Series as the final factor.

It is possible that interleague record and regular season record could be ties, so the case of a 1-1 tie, the winner of the All-Star game would then be the tie-breaker and cast the deciding vote.

While still not a perfect system, it does eliminate or atleast mitigate some of the flaws of each of the individual choices for determining home field advantage in the World Series. The All-Star game would still be "meaningful", yet no longer would all the HFA eggs be in one basket. The All-Star game could still allow for fan voting since it would now be only carrying a 1/3 weight. Finishing with the best overall record now becomes an important item in the World Series, and how strong your league is would now make a difference in terms of how well it does in interleague games.