After the flight, we got a ton of comments from people that they didn’t even know dogs were on the plane.

The cats didn’t shut up for two hours

The Trailblazers consulted with a sleep expert in the offseason and he recommneded that they stay on west coast time, so for example on the east coast stay up til 3:00 local time and sleep until 11:00 am, have your 9:00 am team meeting at noon and so on.

Annecdotally, small sample size caveats and so on, so far it seems to be working great as the Blazers have an outstanding record on east coast road games.

The teams’ travel schedules don’t change too drastically from year to year.

Well, unless you’re stuck in Cleveland for a week snowbound and get to fly back at random points in the season.

I must admit I loved the schedule we had in 2001 and a few years after where we started the season playing 19 games in division, and pretty much followed the A’s around the league and interleague. I loved it because the season had a shape to it I could see and understand and anticipate. “Okay, now it’s time to play the East.” The current schedule makers seem to make a virtue out of near random combinations of teams. “Okay, now it’s time to play KC at home, having last seen them in their place three months ago.”

The cost, then, to the clubs is about the same as a road game in spring training. If I’m the Rockies having to fly to Toronto to play a sparsely attended game for the benefit of the sellout crowds for the “natural pairings” series, I’m not just a little ticked.

I may be wrong about this, but I think your chart is a bit misleading. You’re showing a strong correlation between road wins and winning % for the entire season, correct? In that case, winning % is the same as taking (road wins + home wins) / (total games), so a large part of the correlation you’re showing is really just road wins correlating with itself. If you were to show road wins vs. home wins, you’d still see a similar pattern, but the correlation wouldn’t be quite as strong.

I agree, I don’t see what the point of the graph is. Graphing “road wins” against “winning percent” is like graphing “number of hits” against “batting average”. It’s guaranteed to show a strong positive correlation, for the reasons that you mentioned. Actually even stronger, because some players with good batting averages have few hits, if they’re parttimers or missed games due to injury. Whereas almost all teams play exactly 162 games.

Also, if you want to support your argument that travel isn’t a big factor in team performance, wouldn’t it be more useful to compare the road wins vs. home wins relationship for the Mariners to the same relationship for other teams that don’t have to travel as far?

Another good point. THAT might’ve been an interesting and useful graph.

The one I would actually wonder about is the travel arrangements when the Nationals play the Orioles.

Of course, the Nats catch the Metro green line at the Navy Yard, transfer to the red line, disembark at Union Station, and take Amtrak to Baltimore!

Thank goodness the team chemistry generated by long flights caused them to win 116 games, or they wouldn’t have been able to overcome the 46 games they lost due to fatigue from their rigorous travel schedule.

Some take the team bus, but there also is a good portion of the team that drives on their own to the games. Really depends on the players preference.

So there you have it!