Scraping & munging to answer: Has any team before the 2022 Phillies won all of their playoff game 1s on the road?

gistfile1.txt

# SOURCE: retrosheet.org - https://www.retrosheet.org/gamelogs/index.html
library(withr)
library(data.table)

# one file for the full history of each round
playoff_logs <- c(
  wild_card = "https://www.retrosheet.org/gamelogs/glwc.zip",
  lds = "https://www.retrosheet.org/gamelogs/gldv.zip",
  lcs = "https://www.retrosheet.org/gamelogs/gllc.zip",
  world_series = "https://www.retrosheet.org/gamelogs/glws.zip"
)

playoff_data <- lapply(playoff_logs, function(url) {
  # download, unzip, ingest
  download.file(url, tmp <- withr::local_tempfile(), quiet = TRUE)
  dir <- withr::local_tempdir()
  unzip(tmp, exdir = dir)
  series_data <- fread(list.files(dir, full.names = TRUE))

  # thanks to data dictionary:
  #   https://www.retrosheet.org/gamelogs/glfields.txt
  setnames(
    series_data,
    c("V1", "V4", "V6", "V7", "V10", "V11"),
    c("date", "visitor", "game_number", "home", "visitor_score", "home_score")
  )
  # drop unneeded columns
  series_data[, grep("^V", names(series_data)) := NULL]
  series_data
}) |>
  rbindlist(idcol = "round")

# map from abbreviated / canonical team name to common name
team_lookup <- fread("https://www.retrosheet.org/TEAMABR.TXT")
setnames(team_lookup, c("V1", "V3", "V4"), c("abbr", "city", "team"))
playoff_data[team_lookup, on = c(home = "abbr"), home_full := paste(i.city, i.team)]
playoff_data[team_lookup, on = c(visitor = "abbr"), visitor_full := paste(i.city, i.team)]

playoff_data[, date := as.IDate(as.character(date), "%Y%m%d")]
playoff_data[, year := year(date)]
# count visitor game 1 wins, filter for >= 4
playoff_data[
  game_number == 1 & visitor_score > home_score,
  .N,
  by = .(visitor_full, year)
][
  N >= 4
]
#            visitor_full year N
# 1: San Francisco Giants 2014 4

# how about winning all away home games, at least 3 times
playoff_data[
  game_number == 1,
  all(visitor_score > home_score) && .N >= 3,
  by = .(visitor_full, year)
][(V1)]
#            visitor_full year   V1
# 1: San Francisco Giants 2014 TRUE
# 2: San Francisco Giants 2002 TRUE