Historical Trends of the Wild Card Game

The Cardinals season could come to an end tonight if they can’t knock off the mighty Dodgers. While the Dodgers have the advantage of the better team, record, run differential, and home field, the Cardinals have something on their side: history.

I could write up their head to head stats, matchups, etc; let’s look at the Wild Card game in general.

There have been 8 National League Wild Card games (starting in 2012 and excluding the expanded playoffs in 2020). The visiting team has won 5, with the home team taking the other 3. The visiting team has scored 36 runs in those games, while the home team has scored 25, good for a run differential of +11 for the visitors. When you apply that to the Pythagorean Record formula, the visiting team has a winning percentage of .661.

When you expand to include the 9 AL Wild Card games (including yesterday’s Red Sox beating the Yankees), the changes decrease slightly. All visiting teams have won 9 games while the home team has won 8. The visitors have scored 71 runs to the home team’s 62. The +9 run differential is good for a .562 winning percentage.

The Cardinals also have the advantage of having played in a Wild Card game. The Cardinals won their lone game back in 2012 (the infamous Infield Fly game against the Braves) 6-3. The Dodgers haven’t played in a 1-game playoff, although their playoff experience probably trumps this fact.

All of these are small sample sizes though, so we can’t hold the 66%/56% chance of winning and experience in this situation as completely reliable. But anything can happen in a 1-game series.

Check out the Cardinals roster here.