The Chicago Cubs weren’t just fighting against 108 years of history on their journey to the World Series win last year. They also apparently were battling jet lag.
Traveling even just two or three time zones can cause jet lag that hurts Major League Baseball players’ performance, according to a Northwestern University study set to be released this week.
Players’ internal clocks can shift about an hour per day, so traveling farther than one time zone can cause things to go awry, said Ravi Allada, the neurobiology professor at Northwestern who led the study.
The same goes for us nonprofessional athletes.
“When you travel, your (internal) clock doesn’t immediately reset to the new time zone,” he said. “(When) internal clocks are no longer in sync, you suffer some negative consequences.”
Researchers studied 20 years and 40,000 MLB games worth of data. They found that eastward travel was more detrimental because it speeds up our biological clock, which runs a little slow as is, Allada said.
That finding could explain a poor performance in last year’s National League Championship Series, Allada said. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw shut out the Chicago Cubs in Game 2, giving up only two hits. That was the second game in a row in Chicago, so his internal clock could have been adjusted. But in Game 6, the first back in Chicago after three games in Los Angeles, the Cubs scored five runs off Kershaw.
There was a day off between games 5 and 6, so Kershaw and the Dodgers had traveled to Chicago a day before the game. But the pitcher had traveled east, and Allada said his internal clock may not have caught up yet.
“That kind of strenuous activity is the kind that might be very susceptible (to jet lag)” Allada said. The jet-lagged effect can be so extreme it negates the home-field advantage, he said.
Allada’s tip to MLB managers: Send your starting pitchers to town early, and give their internal clocks more time to adjust before the game.
Jet-lagged home teams hit into more double plays, steal fewer bases and hit fewer doubles and triples, according to the study.
Why? Teams have a more structured schedule when they’re on the road, but when they get home, players may not pay attention to their schedules as much and deprive their internal clock of the time it needs to reset, Allada said.
The casual or business traveler likely runs into the same problem.
“Travel across two or three time zones can have significant affect on your performance,” Allada said. “People should be mindful of it, and mindful of it even when they return home.”
Twitter @AllyMarotti
