Cortisol

Home Advantage has been much discussed previously in this blog, and the Guardian's Sean Ingle has an article on the role it may play, and possible reasons why (stress levels are lower and less variable across a home team), in this Autumn's Rugby World Cup, less than three months away.

I've written before how the advantage of playing at home in football is diminishing (the last five seasons have seen four of the best years for Away sides in the nine leagues I keep an eye on), and Serie A's 40% Home Win Percentage last season set a new record in the top leagues. Home goals in the top leagues averaged 1.61 around the turn of the century, a number now down to 1.32 over the past three seasons. More on this in a future post.

Turning to baseball, where Home advantage is negligible:

Every team gets an edge playing in front of the home crowd, but exactly what is the home field advantage worth for each MLB team? If you simply look at the league average over the years, you’ll find home field is worth about 0.15 runs – which is practically nothing.

and our new best friend C-Lay-ton Kershaw was pitching again last night for the L-Ay Dodgers, who as expected, started at a rather short 1.58. They duly lost 2:4, and Kershaw's record dropped to 5-5. I hope a few of you have been paying attention and also made a little.

Some of you may also be interested to know that a 16 year old short-stop is now eligible to be signed by an MLB team next month having been added to MLB's International Registration List. While that fact alone isn't interesting, what does make it unique is that the French 16 year old is female and:

while virtually anyone can "technically be added to the list, only those who have the potential to actually be signed are customarily registered."

For anyone wondering about her batting, apparently she has already had a hit off a pitcher's 91 mph effort.