Every year, when the schedules are released, we often hear about the teams that have it worst. Almost always, those teams are West teams. According to MLB.com, teams in the West division of their respective leagues had the top eight most travel-heavy schedules in 2016. The full list:
| Team | League | Division | Miles |
| Mariners | AL | West | 47,704 |
| Angels | AL | West | 44,945 |
| Athletics | AL | West | 42,119 |
| Rangers | AL | West | 41,128 |
| Dodgers | NL | West | 40,294 |
| Giants | NL | West | 39,341 |
| Astros | AL | West | 38,553 |
| Padres | NL | West | 37,363 |
| Rays | AL | East | 36,916 |
| Red Sox | AL | East | 36,896 |
| D-Backs | NL | West | 35,312 |
| Yankees | AL | East | 35,252 |
| Marlins | NL | East | 35,226 |
| Rockies | NL | West | 33,287 |
| Blue Jays | AL | East | 32,895 |
| Orioles | AL | East | 32,322 |
| Braves | NL | East | 29,236 |
| Royals | AL | Central | 29,077 |
| Twins | AL | Central | 28,948 |
| Phillies | NL | East | 28,351 |
| Mets | NL | East | 26,832 |
| White Sox | AL | Central | 26,538 |
| Cardinals | NL | Central | 26,451 |
| Pirates | NL | Central | 26,134 |
| Brewers | NL | Central | 25,620 |
| Tigers | AL | Central | 25,450 |
| Indians | AL | Central | 25,176 |
| Reds | NL | Central | 25,108 |
| Nationals | NL | East | 24,664 |
| Cubs | NL | Central | 24,271 |
The averages by division:
- AL East: 34,856 miles
- AL Central: 25,176
- AL West: 42,890
- NL East: 28,862
- NL Central: 25,517
- NL West: 37,119
The maps aren’t up for 2017 yet, but rest assured that West teams will once again have it worst. It’s easy to see why, taking a look at the map on MLB.com. If you draw a line to split Texas in half and go straight up through North Dakota, there are only eight teams to the left of that line, leaving the other 23 condensed on the right side. When West teams aren’t playing intra-division games, they are traveling. That’s often not the case for East and Central teams. The Phillies and Pirates, for example, don’t even have to leave the state to play each other.
As Gizmodo points out, a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a link between jet lag and performance. Sleep scientist Ravi Allada of Northwestern University analyzed 4,919 games, finding that teams that traveled East performed worse than those that traveled West. Allada and his colleagues adjusted for home field advantage and park effects.
Specifically, teams that traveled from the West to the East lost more often than East teams traveling West. They gave up more runs and scored less runs. They hit for a lower batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. They gave up more home runs, accounting for most of the decline in run prevention.
There was a peculiar finding. Allada found that jet lagged home teams performed worse than jet lagged visiting teams. He hypothesizes that “teams may be more cognizant of their schedules when traveling away, thus mitigating jet lag effects,” he told Gizmodo.
