MLB funds jet-lag research

Last paragraph of 6/10/08 article in ScienceDaily.com, "Major League Baseball Teams with Greater Circadian Advantage Are More Likely to Succeed:"

• ""We began looking at the impact of travel and time zone changes on Major League Baseball teams in 2004. In that study, we evaluated the impact of travel on team performance, and showed that it did impact game outcome. We decided to expand the study to a 10-year retrospective period, and

with MLB funding,

• recently completed this study which confirmed an impact of travel on team performance."" ("said W. Christopher Winter, MD, of Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, lead author of the study.")

Another article about the study appeared in Scientific American and included this:

• ""[The study's] conclusions, at first glance, seem to correlate with what I've learned about the effect of sleep deprivation on cognitive and motor-skill abilities," says Steve Hirdt,

executive vice president of the Elias Sports Bureau, which specializes in historical sports statistics."

• From Scientific American, sciam.com, 6/10/08, "Out of the Zone: Jet-lagged Baseball Teams Suffer Disadvantage"

I was lead to the Scientific American article by a mention in a sabermetric blog. The sabermatrician (Phil Birnbaum) felt the numbers actually supported an opposite conclusion.

• I was stuck on the MLB funding aspect, such as how much money, was it Yankee luxury tax slush fund money, who commissioned it, what other research have they done on the topic, etc.

And, most importantly, can any research convince them to cancel the World Baseball Classic?

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon