The Cubs' Sleep Advantage

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The Cubs' travel schedule and mileage suggest that they will enjoy an advantage over most of the competition, as the players may be able to maintain their internal clocks and maximize recovery even on their longest road trips.

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

I was looking around FanGraphs to check out what the league as a whole did in 2024, with a sort of idea that I would see if the Cubs in 2025 had assembled a team resembling my platonic ideal of an offense that hit for power via both the home run and gap-to-gap line drives; a pitching staff that could induce whiffs and ground balls; and a defense that vacuumed up most balls in play to convert them into outs. I think most everyone here has remarked on the depth being built into the team so that any lengthy injuries to the projected starters can be weathered (and even Nico Hoerner is expected back by Opening Day stateside in Arizona), so after I looked a bit and saw that the Cubs were generally above average, I decided to pivot into hoping guys just stay healthy, as much as possible.

Some of the health maintenance is probably going to be impacted by changes in the way the Cubs view medicals and perform training, strength, and conditioning going forward, but I went back a month to this tweet:

Obviously, the Tokyo trip is going to be a one-off, and there will be a few days of acclimation to a new time zone on the other side of the International Date Line, where the sun rises (in the Land of the Rising Sun, no less) when the boys usually think it should be setting. The Tokyo trip includes a couple of exhibition games bookended by travel days, so the players can at least collapse into their (hopefully comfortable) hotel beds before they have to reset their clocks. But this is, as far as I can figure, the only major disruption to their body clocks the whole season—albeit one that will precede a period of ramp-down and subsequent ramp-up before they play games that matter again starting Mar. 27 in Arizona.

Ian Happ's podcast is pretty fun, and he mentioned in the most recent episode that he felt the Cactus League schedule so far has been very favorable for the Cubs, with most of his own work coming at home at Sloan Park, and the days he plays putting him into a routine. This is probably similarly true for the rest of the players, and if we know anything about baseball players, they thrive on routine. In the episode, Happ and his co-hosts mentioned that the Cubs will continue their training in Arizona after coming home from Japan, and then open the season against the Diamondbacks, which means they: 1) don't have to travel too far, and 2) don't have to change time zones. The shorter travel is important, but I think the time zone thing is equally so.

In 2017, the Nobel Prize was awarded to scientists who teased out the molecular basis of the internal clock that is used by nearly all organisms on planet Earth. The tweet above seems like a throwaway, but sleep is extremely important—so much so that I'm stealing the title of this article from a fairly well-received book (please don't sue), among many in the sleep field, because proper sleep/wake cycles are so important to organisms' health. That includes our favorite baseball players. The Cubs may have eschewed professional sleep doctors or whatever, but as Happ suggested (and we're about to discuss), the schedule and itinerary are actually very favorable to keeping the guys fresh, despite the natural fatigue that comes from travel.

Fellow NSBBer Steve Trefz has already plotted out the road trips in 2025, and I looked at the season as a whole on my hobby site with friends (spoiler: I think the Cubs win 94). The folks at Bookies.com also tabulated every team's travel for the 2025 season, and while I had figured it would be the case, it was still a pleasant surprise to see that (outside their trip to Japan) the Cubs travel the least once everyone is Stateside. If the math is correct, at 23,039.7 miles total, the Cubs' remaining 160 games' worth of travel after Japan will be more than 2,000 miles fewer than the Cleveland Guardians—which is pretty amazing, and (of course) a huge advantage in not putting their bodies through the wringer even on comfortable chartered flights.

The Cubs also have to change their clocks among the fewest times across the league, owing to their position in the Midwest and the Central time zone. After Japan, they only have to change their clocks a maximum of two hours, and that only happens twice more after their opening road series out west. After Japan, the Cubs train in Arizona for another eight days before the Diamondbacks series that really drops things into gear, which means they have time to re-acclimate to a "normal" schedule.

That first road trip in Arizona and Sacramento (boo, A's) is nice, too, because Arizona doesn't care about Daylight Savings Time. The clock won't change until they're on their way back to Chicago for the home opener. It does suck that they have to fly back out west again in April, but the Cubs don't have to deal with the Pacific Time Zone again until August, after which they don't have to travel far at all to close out the year. For the most part, the team will remain in their own time zone or shift maybe an hour, which is highly manageable. Having so little disruption to their body clock, along with the minimal travel relative to the rest of the league, could be an edge that will play out well for the Cubs in 2025.

As I mentioned also in the article on Obstructed View, barring rainouts and rescheduling, the Cubs get all Thursdays off in April, most of the Thursdays off in May, and reasonable travel most of the rest of the way surrounding their home series. Not only are the Cactus League and Japan schedule favorable, all things considered, but the regular season will allow the Cubs to have lots of recovery time and minimal disruption, particularly early on, when pitchers are still ramping up and hitters are trying to hone in their timing. Along with Craig Counsell's ability to manage rest and bullpens, I am curious to see how this potential edge plays out for the 2025 Cubs.

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