Historically, the Red Sox have thrived in the playoff atmosphere of Fenway. However, players and manager alike seemed disinterested in home-field advantage.
On the morning of September 27, 2016, the Boston Red Sox were in the midst of an eleven-game winning streak, and laid claim to the American League’s top record at 92-64. Home-field advantage throughout the playoffs was theirs to lose, as both Cleveland and Texas were one game behind in the “loss” column.
Suffice it to say, the Red Sox lost what “was theirs to lose”; ceding home-field to both Cleveland and Texas in no time flat. Admittedly, home-field advantage does not yield nearly the equivalent significance in baseball, as it does in football and basketball. Nonetheless, I would argue that for one specific baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, home-field advantage rivals that observed in the aforementioned two sports.
Owning the tiebreaker against the Cleveland Indians meant that the Red Sox effectively maintained a two-game lead on the Indians with merely six games remaining on the schedule. Unfortunately, the Red Sox lost five of their remaining six contests; Cleveland won three of their next five games, and, while unbeknownst at the time, our postseason hopes evaporated more quickly than a beaker of Acetone in a hot laboratory.
Cleveland’s September 28 contest against Detroit was rained out; however, the game would be played on Monday, October 3, were there any seeding implications for Cleveland or playoff implications for Detroit. Perhaps the greatest indictment of the Red Sox “collapse,” was that Cleveland did not even require that final game to assume home field advantage in their series against the Red Sox.