Out of the Zone: Jet-Lagged Baseball Teams Suffer Disadvantage
"Betting on your favorite Major League Baseball team? You might want to reconsider if it has to cross three time zones to play. A new study shows that MLB teams that travel such distances to play a game could have up to a 60 percent chance of losing." I found this intriguing because since the beginning of May, the Mets have played: 3 games in the Mountain time zone 3 games in the Pacific time zone 14 games in the Eastern time zone 3 games in the Mountain time zone 7 games in the Eastern time zone 7 games in the Pacific time zone 6 games in the Eastern time zone 3 games in the Pacific time zone (now) 3 games in the Mountain time zone and then back to the Eastern time zone, where they'll stay for a while. They've also made four shifts of two or three time zones without an off day and will make a fifth this coming Sunday night. I don't know whether this is abnormal or whether it's a frequent occurrence since the MLB switched from a human-generated schedule to a computer-generated one. To me, though, it seems like frequent cross-country trips (especially combined with the long stretch without an off day between 5/20 and 6/8) could be a factor in the Mets' inability to find any kind of a rhythm or get any momentum built up in recent weeks.



