Who will have home-field advantage in the World Series?

For the first time since 2003, the All-Star Game outcome didn’t dictate home field advantage for the World Series. The American League won, and nobody had to care about it! Congrats to them, of course, but after that fun few days in Miami, it didn’t matter.

Before that, the league just alternated on odd and even years, which is even more of a misguided decision that thankfully hasn’t been the system for more than 15 years now.

Now, home-field advantage is based on what it probably should have been based on all along — which team puts up a better record in the regular season.

No frills, no random events thrown in to decide, just a reward for whichever team had a better showing from April until September.

This year, the teams that are left in the postseason are the Dodgers, Yankees, and Astros. So which of them, should they face each other in the Fall Classic, would get homefield advantage?

This year, no matter who comes out of the American League to face the Dodgers, that answer is easy. Los Angeles will boast home-field advantage against either New York or Houston. The Dodgers were the best team in the league this year, despite their August and September shakiness, and were three games better than the Astros and 13 games ahead of the Yankees when all was said and done.

If the Cubs had made the World Series, the Astros would have held the advantage, but the Yankees would have ceded home-field to Chicago as they were one game worse than the Cubbies in the regular season.

But those hypotheticals don’t really matter, because it’s the Dodgers. It looked like — if they made the Series — that it would be the Dodgers with home-field months ago, and that prediction held up.

LA is looking for its first Series win in nearly 30 years, so it will be happy to have all the help it can get to make sure it clinches this win. Whether the Dodgers can do it remains to be seen, but they are getting all the help possible from the setup granted to them.