Is the vaccine issue giving Toronto Blue Jays an unfair edge?

Back in olden times, when there was an American League and a National League President to decide things like suspensions for fights and beanballs, the American League had a process where players who appealed their suspensions would receive a hearing whenever the player’s team had a trip to New York scheduled.  This was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and there was no Zoom for holding meetings.

This actually went on for years before somebody figured out that if the appeal was denied the suspension would take effect as soon as the hearing was over, which meant that pretty much every suspension was served against the Yankees.  There’s no way to know if this actually made a difference in how a season turned out, but since then the process has been refined to fix this problem.

Toronto Blue Jays may have unfair advantage due to location

A similar scenario has played out this season, in which teams that have visited Toronto have generally been without one or more players due to their unwillingness to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.  There is no reason to sympathize with these players, as they were aware of the situation before the season and chose to give up the pay and the ability to help their teams win.

But the flip side of this is that the Toronto Blue Jays have received an advantage that they have not exactly earned, having played a good bit of their home schedule against teams that were short-handed.  This particular weekend, Cleveland is without James Karinchak, who has solidified himself in the set-up role by posting twelve consecutive scoreless appearances.  Earlier this season, Kansas City infamously showed up for a series in Toronto missing ten  players from their roster.

Will the loss of Karinchak cost the Guardians a game?  Hard to say, but over the course of 81 games, it seems likely that this has helped the Blue Jays at least to some degree.  The standings back this up.  Major League teams as a whole are 99 games above .500 at home as of Sunday morning, which means home field has been worth three games to the average team.  The Blue Jays, however, are thirteen games above .500 at home and three games below on the road, which is an eight-game difference.

Toronto has typically had a larger-than-average home field edge.  The Blue Jays averaged 6.6 games better at home than on the road from 2010 through 2019, the last season not impacted by Covid.  There is also a randomness about home field that might sort itself out by the end of the season.  Or it might not.  Eight games is obviously more than 6.6, and the current season is only about 70% complete.

In any event, it seems likely that the AL wild card race will come down to the wire.  If the vaccine issue has given Toronto even a game or two that they might not have otherwise won, that could be enough to put the Toronto Blue Jays in the playoffs.