We are all different when it comes to sleep. Some of us are early birds who enjoy morning activities while others are night owls who come out to play once the sun goes down. For those of us fortunate enough to know our true colors, time of day lends a remarkable opportunity to capitalize on tasks.
A morning person, for example, may choose to schedule his or her workouts in the morning, as this is the time when they feel most alert, energized and up for the challenge. A night owl, on the other hand, might save his or her study time for after dinner as this is the time when the mental juices seem to flow best.
Based on this concept, researchers set out to determine if time of day plays a part in the athletic ability of the early birds and night owls of Major League Baseball.
Just like the rest of us, professional baseball players perform best when their “work hours” coincide with their natural sleep cycle. Accordingly, it seems logical to suggest that early birds would perform better at morning games while night owls might perform better at night games.
Interestingly, a new study conducted by Dr. W. Christopher Winter of the Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Va., has not only validated this concept, but has even gone as far to quantify the effect that time of day has on performance among professional baseball players.
The study involved 16 players from seven professional baseball teams including the Angels, the Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. Each player filled out a form called the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, in which Winter then compared the results with accumulated batting from the 2009 and 2010 baseball seasons.
For the purpose of the study, Winter divided games into three categories. Winter designated the first category to games that began before 2 p.m., the second to games starting between 2 p.m. and 7:59 p.m., and the third for games starting after 8 p.m.
Winter also factored the jet lag that players experience traveling from Safeco Field in Seattle to Baltimore’s Camden Yards. The final tally included 2,149 innings of early games, 4,550 innings played midday and 750 innings of night games.
Measuring combined batting average, morning players performed better than night owls did in day games, as predicted by Winter. For day games, the early birds outbatted the night owls by a margin of .267 to .259.
By the same token, night owls outbatted early birds in night games by a margin of .306 to .252.
As far as the midday games, the night owls ended up on top with a combined batting average of .261 compared to the .252 batting average of morning players.
Winter presented these results Monday June 13, 2011 at Sleep 2011, the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, although it was not the first time he studied this concept.
Winter reported at last year’s Sleep meeting that early bird players pitched better in games before 7 p.m. while night owls pitched better at night games.
Winter’s advice to professional baseball coaches for selecting a player, which currently involves factors including handedness, rest and previous successes against a certain team, is to match a player’s chronotype with the time of day of the game.
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