[BostonCard]

You make my point in a long winded way.    You can't precisely determine the impact of time zones because there are too many other variables.  If you could isolate time zone travel from all other variables something statistically of value could be stated.

Analytically, MT's analysis makes sense, at least once there are enough games to even out those other variables (and you can reasonably debate whether a season is enough to make firm conclusions).  But you can view scheduling as a quasi-random experiment.  Over the course of the season, the home team and visiting team should, on average be evenly matched.  Thus, any departure from a .500 record suggests an advantage to the home (or visiting team, though in practice that rarely happens).  The larger the departure .500, the more that advantage is.  If travel distance didn't make much of a difference, visiting teams traveling greater distances would have a similar record to visiting teams with less travel.  And MT's analysis is suggestive that when a visiting team has to travel 2 or 3 time zones, it has a larger disadvantage than when it has to travel within its time zone or to an adjacent time zone.  Is it absolute proof?  No, you would probably want to see it over the course of multiple seasons.  But given that the hypothesis is plausible to begin with I can believe it.

BC

[BostonCard]

You make my point in a long winded way.    You can't precisely determine the impact of time zones because there are too many other variables.  If you could isolate time zone travel from all other variables something statistically of value could be stated.

Analytically, MT's analysis makes sense, at least once there are enough games to even out those other variables (and you can reasonably debate whether a season is enough to make firm conclusions).  But you can view scheduling as a quasi-random experiment.  Over the course of the season, the home team and visiting team should, on average be evenly matched.  Thus, any departure from a .500 record suggests an advantage to the home (or visiting team, though in practice that rarely happens).  The larger the departure .500, the more that advantage is.  If travel distance didn't make much of a difference, visiting teams traveling greater distances would have a similar record to visiting teams with less travel.  And MT's analysis is suggestive that when a visiting team has to travel 2 or 3 time zones, it has a larger disadvantage than when it has to travel within its time zone or to an adjacent time zone.  Is it absolute proof?  No, you would probably want to see it over the course of multiple seasons.  But given that the hypothesis is plausible to begin with I can believe it.

BC