That’s where Chris Winter, a neurologist and sleep expert who consults for the Phillies, comes in. His job is to help players sleep optimally, so they can perform optimally.
“I always say to players, ‘sleep is the most important thing in the world outside of sex and bacon,’” Winter said, half-jokingly.
Sleep, like baseball, is an art and a science that requires practice and skill. Winter prescribes bedtime routines, daily power naps, and strategies on how to reduce fatigue when traveling between time zones. (Pro tip: for every time zone traveled, the body needs 24 hours to adjust, according to Winter.)
In a game where even the slightest advantage can go a long way, Major League Baseball teams are leaving nothing to chance. Their rosters now include statisticians, exercise specialists, nutritionists and sleep experts to help give teams the statistical edge. The Washington Nationals, for example, turned to Meeta Singh, a Michigan-based neurologist, to help them win the 2019 World Series over the Houston Astros, 4-3.
The Phillies have Winter, a self-described champion sleeper with a proven record. He helped the San Francisco Giants win three World Series rings over a five-year span from 2010-2014 by tailoring the schedules of players to achieve what Winter calls their “circadian prime.”
It’s about adjusting a player’s internal clock — by using light therapy and tinkering with travel, meal and sleep times — to align with the game’s time zone.
“You want to trick the body into thinking it’s 6 p.m. when it’s really 9 p.m.,” said Winter, who also consults for the Cleveland Guardians, San Diego Padres and Boston Red Sox. Scientific research shows that most players peak athletically around 4 p.m., Winter noted.
Can’t sleep? Here are some tips to help Phillies fans get some shut-eye
Winter said he’ll sometimes recommend to MLB leaders that certain players, like a relief pitcher or “closer,” travel separately, though he admits that doesn’t always go over well with players who want to be with their teammates.
To help players get their Zzzz, the Phillies sought out his expertise in 2018 at the urging of Paul Fournier, the longtime former Phillies strength and conditioning coach.
“It’s all about performance,” Fournier said. “It’s about hunting margins and trying to improve all aspects of their training and recovery so it shows in performances on the field, and one of those aspects is sleep, obviously.”
Fournier, who joined the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this year as a performance coach, said Winter thinks of every sleep-related detail. For example, when the Phillies had games on the west coast, Winter advised the team to book rooms on the west side of the hotel so the sun, which rises in the east, didn’t wake players too earlier.
Winter, author of The Rested Child, also encouraged players to pack a sleep mask, earplugs, lavender-scented spray — and a woobie, specifically “a pillow or a garment that makes you feel like you’re closer to home,” Fournier said.
World Series sleep tips?
So what did Winter suggest for the Phillies before they left for Houston on Wednesday ahead of Friday’s opening of the 118th World Series at Minute Maid Park at 8:03 p.m. Eastern/7:03 p.m. Central. He prefers to keep that hush-hush.
“We can talk about that after they win the World Series,” Winter said during an interview Monday.
He stressed that good sleep is one of dozens of variables that give teams an edge, and ultimately, it’s up to managers — and players — to make the right call.
“It’s not my job to run a baseball team,” Winter said. “My job is to say to somebody making the decisions, ‘This is what the sleep science tells us, this is how much weight you should put in it, you do what you want with that information.’”
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After the Phillies lost, 8-5, to the Padres during an afternoon game in San Diego on Oct. 18 to tie up the best-out-of-seven National League Championship Series, players wanted to fly home right away. But the sleep science, based on travel direction and start time of their next game, tipped the performance margin in favor of staying the night.
The players lobbied to go home that night and managers agreed. The team landed in Philadelphia around 4 a.m. the next day, and on Oct. 21, in Game 3 of the NLCS at Citizens Bank Park, the Phillies beat the Padres, 4-2, to give them the lead.
“It worked out wonderfully for them,” Winter said.
Winter didn’t watch any games between the Phillies and Padres. It makes him too anxious, and he consults for both teams.
“I just hate watching teams that I work with loose,” he said. “I care a lot about the club, and I want to see sleep prevail.”
Playing the odds with “circadian advantage”
Winter, 49, lays his head down nightly in his Virginia home. He always wanted to be a doctor, just wasn’t sure what type. Then while studying at the University of Virginia in the early 1990s, he helped a researcher study whether breast implants in pigs contributed to sleep apnea.
He got the idea to study whether there was a correlation between sleep and performance of professional baseball players. He did a pilot study using the Montreal Expos who were playing half their games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and crisscrossing five time zones.
The research showed that performance could be measured by how well players adjusted to a time zone — a factor Winter calls “circadian advantage.”
Here’s how it works: let’s say the Phillies fly out to San Francisco to play the Giants. Then they head to Seattle to play the Mariners. The Mariners just flew back from a game on the east coast to play the Phillies. While the Mariners have the home-field advantage, the Phillies have the circadian advantage because they’ve already adjusted to west coast time.
Winter said his research caught the attention of oddsmakers in Vegas, then a local television station in Colorado — where Ben Potenziano, at the time with the San Francisco Giants and now an assistant athletic trainer with the Miami Marlins, caught the broadcast in a hotel lobby and contacted Winter.
“This kind of interview we’re doing right now, in a decade, will be as exciting as you interviewing a team about hey, ‘I noticed that you were giving your players water. Tell me more about that.’ It will just be kind of standard,” Winter told an Inquirer reporter.
With Winter’s guidance, the Phillies now have a “recovery room,” a quiet space with a bed with a cooling mattress, zero-gravity recliners and special lighting where players harness Winter’s “nap strategy,” which involves drinking caffeine before a 20-minute snooze, according to Fournier.
Whether Phillies pitchers throw a shutout against the Houston Astros during the World Series might depend on whether they get enough shut-eye the night before.
That’s where Chris Winter, a neurologist and sleep expert who consults for the Phillies, comes in. His job is to help players sleep optimally, so they can perform optimally.
“I always say to players, ‘sleep is the most important thing in the world outside of sex and bacon,’” Winter said, half-jokingly.
Sleep, like baseball, is an art and a science that requires practice and skill. Winter prescribes bedtime routines, daily power naps, and strategies on how to reduce fatigue when traveling between time zones. (Pro tip: for every time zone traveled, the body needs 24 hours to adjust, according to Winter.)
“Once you come out of the nap, that caffeine starts to kick in and helps stimulate the body a little more than just doing the nap itself,” Fournier said.
It’s understandable if the Phillies struggle to sleep before the World Series games, said Winter. Instead of counting sheep, he advises players to get in bed, close their eyes and envision throwing a perfect pitch, catch, or hit 30 times. Sleep hygiene is key for players not just before big games but all year round.
As for Phillies fans who are too amped-up to sleep, Winter’s advice is don’t worry, a dose of victory will be good medicine.
“When the Phillies sweep the Astros in four games, this temporary issue with your sleep will be self-limited,” he said.
Wendy Ruderman:
2022 World Series coverage: Phillies vs. Astros
©2022 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content
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