How The Cubs Won The NL Wild-Card Game

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.