Replication Data for: COVID-19 Countermeasures, Major League Baseball, and the Home Field Advantage

In the context of the COVID-19, almost all major leagues were either cancelled or postponed. Sports industry suffered a major blow with uncertainty of sporting events in the near future. Various scenarios of how and when sports might start back up have certainly been on everyone’s minds. This paper examines various scenarios of how the Major League Baseball team performance is going to be impacted in the presence of fans, or the lack thereof, in the context of physical distancing and other countermeasures in place. The paper simulates the win-loss probabilities for various scenarios under consideration as well as estimates the home effect for each team using the data for the 2015-2019 season. We show that team-home effect is symmetric between home and away and teams will not necessarily have a win or loss of any additional games in neutral stadiums as teams with a high home field effect will lose more neutral games that would have been at home but will win more neutral games that would have been away. This estimation helps us understand how individual team performance is going to be impacted as they prepare for the 2020 season under the new circumstances.