Baseball’s Jet Lag Drag

Major League Baseball teams that travel through three time zones or more are at a significant disadvantage against their time-adjusted opponents, according to a new study by neurologist W. Christopher Winter of the Martha Jefferson Sleep Medicine Center. The performance impairment diminishes with each day a given team has to acclimate to the new time zone.

But the circadian advantage, as Winter calls it, could grow larger. Amphetamines, which players have used to fight jet lag, were banned by the MLB in 2005.

This does nothing to explain the home-ice disadvantage that Dubner blogged about recently. But maybe it can help explain Omar Minaya‘s midnight firing of Mets manager Willie Randolph.