The home teams in the first seven wild-card play-in games have won just twice. (The Pirates hosted games the past two years and are 1-1.) That’s a 29 percent success rate, admittedly in a very small sample size. And it could drop to 25 percent after this tough start for Pittsburgh: The Cubs have a 57 percent chance of winning now that they’re up 1-0 in the bottom of the first. And that doesn’t take into account how dominant Jake Arrieta has been lately (0.75 ERA since the All-Star Break).
By contrast, during the regular season home teams won 54 percent of games.
Neil Paine
The Pirates and Cubs are a couple of franchises that have been around forever, but the 2015 editions rank among the best they’ve ever had. According to our Elo ratings — combining their end-of-season, season-average and maximum ratings from the regular season — this is the 18th-best Pirates team ever (the best since 1991) and the 27th-best Cubs team of all time (though only the best since 2008).
To echo what will surely be a theme all night, it’s a shame one of these great teams has to see its season end tonight.
Carl Bialik
The anticipated duel between two of the NL’s best pitchers has started with two hits in two plate appearances and one run for the Cubs.
