Does Time of Day Matter?
First off, I’m way late in thanking Scott Goldblatt for pinch-hitting for me while I was cavorting about the central California coast during the World Series. Second, if you don’t know who Scott is, he’s an Olympic gold and silver medalist who also runs the excellent swimming blog Timed Finals. I confess, when it comes to swimming, once I get past “be sure to put on a life preserver before getting into the pool” I’m pretty much lost.
That said, there is a post up at Timed Finals called “Science Says Athletes Perform Better At Night” that caught my eye. It’s pretty self-explanatory, really, but I wonder if there is any way this information can be leveraged where baseball is concerned. Or maybe it already is and we just don’t know about it.
When you look at a baseball player’s statistics nowadays, one of the many bits of information you can find is his day/night splits. In other words, you can see how he did during day games as opposed to during night games. I’ve seen some discussion on perfomance based on time of day, and going back a little further, Jim Albert and Jay Bennett did some research in this area in their book, Curve Ball, concluding that differences between day and night performances were essentially random.
I remain skeptical. It seems to me that if there are physiological differences, then they should manifest themselves in statistical output. This could be an area of further inquiry for someone.
And no, I’m not volunteering. ;-)
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