Does home field advantage matter in MLB?
A little, and less than almost any other sport. The home team wins 53% of MLB games. For comparison, home teams win around 60% in the NBA and about 57% in the NFL. Baseball has the smallest home edge of the major American sports.
There is no crowd noise disrupting a snap count, no travel-weary legs on a back-to-back. The biggest real home advantage in baseball, batting last, only matters in the innings a game actually reaches the ninth tied. Most of the time it never comes up.
A few points above even across 6,321 games. Real, and nothing close to a lock.
The practical takeaway: "they're at home" is one of the weakest reasons to favor a baseball team. A great pitcher, a platoon edge, or a rested bullpen moves a game far more than the ballpark's zip code does. When a broadcast leans on home-field magic, the numbers barely back it up.
Every number here comes from our own game database: 6,321 MLB games since 2024, rebuilt nightly. We compute rates across all qualifying games, never a cherry-picked window. This is descriptive history, not a prediction, and it updates on its own.
Last recomputed July 8, 2026.