Study: Jet Lag Significantly Affects Performance Of MLB Players
EVANSTON, Ill. (CBS) -- A new study finds that jet lag affects the offense of Major League Baseball home teams more than the jet-lagged of away teams.
According to researchers from Northwestern University, baseball players suffer "negative consequences" when their travel "misaligns their internal 24-hour clock with the natural environment and its cycle of sunlight."
"Jet lag does impair the performance of Major League Baseball players," Dr. Ravi Allada, the study's author, said in a statement. "The negative effects of jet lag we found are subtle, but they are detectable and significant. And they happen on both offense and defense and for both home and away teams, often in surprising ways."
Researchers suggested that jet lag might have affected Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw's performance in the 2016 National League Championship Series against the Chicago Cubs. In Game 2, Kershaw gave up only two hits in seven scoreless innings, but in Game 6, he got tagged by the Cubs.
"For game 6, the teams had returned to Chicago from LA, and this time the Cubs scored five runs off of Kershaw, including two home runs," Allada said. "While it's speculation, our research would suggest that jet lag was a contributing factor in Kershaw's performance."
Researchers looked at data spanning 20 years for their study, which included more than 40,000 games. They found that the "offense of jet-lagged home teams is much more affected than that of jet-lagged away teams"; negative effects related to base running; defense suffers for both home and away teams; and the most significant jet lag happens for teams traveling eastward than westward.
"If I were a baseball manager and my team was traveling across time zones — either to home or away — I would send my first starting pitcher a day or two ahead, so he could adjust his clock to the local environment," Allada said.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.