When I travel, I routinely keep to my own time zone.  Unless my trip is going to extend beyond 4 days.  (Yes, that one time I went to Taiwan for a day- it was a little disconcerting to be off by 12 hours…)  It’s the way I avoid having any jet lag problems.  It helps that I also am more than able to sleep on planes, and don’t need a whole bunch of sleep, to boot.

It never crossed my mind to consider what happens to my beloved Phillies players when they travel to the West Coast and back.  It turns out there are two studies on the effects of jet lag on team performance.

One ten year study of jet lag among baseball teams (published 2009)  is found in Human Kinetics Journal.  Drs. WW Christopher, WR Hammand, NH Green (all from Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Center in Charlottesville VA), Z Zhang (Notre Dame), and DL Bliwise (Emory, Atlanta) reported that there was only a small effect- obviously, the team with jet lag was more likely to lose.  Over this decade long period only a quarter of the games were played when one team had a circadian rhythm advantage.  (That’s 5042 games out of a total of 24121.)   Of those games, the non-traveling team won 52% of the time.

Except, not so quick.  If there was a 2 hour advantage, the non-traveling team won 51.8% of the time.  But, a 3 hour advantage brought up the likelihood to 60.6%.  And, teams traveling west to east were more likely to win (53%), while the  east to west travelers won only 50.9% of the time.  The authors reported that the home field advantage (playing in the team’s stadium) had more effect.

Those results were kind of what one would “dream up” if they thought about the concept.  However, that’s really not the last word- or the whole story.  Because  Dr. Ravi Allada, a neurobiologist (Northwestern) took up the cause, along with Alex Song and Thomas Severini.  After all, Dr. Allada’s research focus is on circadian rhythm and sleep,so this would be right in his bailiwick.

Dr. Allada examined the problem the way I would have, had this been a study I’d undertake.  Because jet lag can affect play after one is already at  home- so when a team arrives after a trip, their play can  still be affected.  That was not among the issues examined by Christopher et. al.

Studying the results of ball games over 20 years (1992 to 2011), the researchers narrowed the field (pun intended) from 46,535 games to 4919 that had teams engaged with two time zone differences or more.  The data they studied included batting (extra base hits, sacrifice flies), stolen bases, and pitching.  And, they differentiated the results between east and west travelers.

As noted by Christopher et. al., those traveling east did much worse. The teams were far less aggressive (less likely to double or triple; fewer stolen bases); these statistics rely on players capable of delivering above-average base running. Home field advantage means winning 53.9% of the time; traveling east more for two or more time zones brought that statistic to 50.4%; in other words, the home field advantage wsa erased.

Pitching had more pronounced results.  Jet lag meant a pitcher would be less likely to avoid providing a pitch that yields a home run. Not surprising either, since pitchers rely on fine motor skills and complex cognition, both of which are affected by jet lag.

The research isn’t over.  After all, this is a retrospective study, so many factors exist that can’t be controlled or analyzed.  Now, the team is going to follow one team (rumored to be the Cubs, since that is Allada’s favorite) and maybe even a few individual players.

Play ball!

By the way, Allada’s article has a great list of baseball acronyms and term definitions.  That alone makes the article worth examining!

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