Why Do Spring Training Days Start So Early?
A simple question about baseball’s schedule reveals something deeper. Obvious problems sometimes survive because fixing them is riskier than leaving them alone.
Early March has always been my favorite part of Spring Training. Young players getting meaningful playing time in Major League games with backfield games starting up — how can you not be romantic about baseball?
Alas, the spring isn’t without frustrations. Because as much as I enjoy this time of year, it’s also a striking example of how inertia and misaligned incentives enable obviously incorrect practices to persist.
What am I referring to? That the days during Spring Training start way too early.
Before we get too far, it’s worth admitting that I’m the diametric opposite of a morning person. If it was up to me, sleeping in would be more normalized across society.
But the thing about Spring Training start times is that no one thinks they should be as early as they are. More often than not, there is emphatic agreement that something needs to change.
Professional baseball is a highly competitive environment mixing elite athletics with high-pressure decisions. It’s well understood that sleep, rest, and recovery have huge impacts on performance, injury prevention, and critical thinking. Some might quibble on the magnitude of the effect, but directionally, there is no argument, evidenced by the large investments teams make in specialists and technology to track, evaluate, and improve sleep. Expecting young athletes — and in the minor leagues we’re often talking about teenagers — to get 7-8 hours of sleep before an early morning training session is unrealistic.
And yet every year, camps across Florida and Arizona still hold workouts that require players and staff to arrive before the sun comes up.
If you ask someone why that is, they’ll try to provide some sort of explanation. I’ve heard them all. The most convincing is probably that the games begin around 1:00 pm, necessitating early start times so players and staff can finish their work beforehand. But that rationale falls apart on inspection because teams set their own game times during Spring Training1, and the workouts don’t begin any later before games start.
I’ve even witnessed a General Manager ask why the days start so early, as if he wasn’t the person most empowered to change things.
Now, I bring all of this up not to be critical of any one person or organization. The people that work in sports are bright, creative, and driven. But the simple reality is that this is an all-too-familiar situation where something is likely wrong, easily fixable, and yet stays the same.
It’s puzzling and frustrating to think about. In an industry seemingly obsessed with efficiency and competitive advantage, how do teams justify this type of behavior?
Inertia and peer pressure — while both poor reasons — are big factors. Things have been done a certain way in baseball for a long time. Change is uncomfortable for coaches and players, particularly veteran players who have grown accustomed to routine.
If we dig a little deeper, the more powerful force is that the incentive structure facing leaders in the sports industry doesn’t encourage change when the benefits are hard to prove.
Let’s say that the General Manager I referenced decides he’s had enough and he shifts the team’s Spring Training schedule so that games, workouts, and meetings begin later. He explains to players and staff that this is to prioritize rest, recovery, and well-being, and he truly believes this is going to help the organization perform better in the upcoming season.
In the best case scenario, the team stays healthy and outperforms their expectations. Is that because of the later start times in Spring Training? How much did the extra rest and recovery help the team? What would have happened if they didn’t adjust the times?
These questions cannot be answered. There is no control group2, making attribution impossible. The team may succeed, but there’s no clear way to credit the change.
That’s the best case scenario. There’s also a full spectrum of outcomes where the team plays poorly or has a rash of injuries.
In those scenarios, attribution isn’t any more feasible, but that probably wouldn’t stop a narrative from developing. An article would be written that the clubhouse was too relaxed, a veteran would complain publicly, or unnamed sources in the organization would talk about how serious teams get to work early in the day.
Leaders aren’t going to risk that type of visible downside, particularly in an industry where job security is hard to come by atop organizations. Better to stick with the status quo, even if that doesn’t live up to the standard of sound decision-making they hope to uphold in other spaces.
Changing something as benign as Spring Training start times wouldn’t actually be difficult. It is research-backed, requires no dedicated budget, and is supported by many people throughout organizations. The ease is the most frustrating part.
What makes the move challenging is accepting that any benefits likely come without proof.
Even with small changes, someone has to take responsibility for outcomes they can’t control or predict. In environments where leaders feel trusted and empowered, that isn’t a problem. Unfortunately, those don’t always exist in professional sports. Leaving players, coaches, and staffers with early morning wake-up calls, spring after spring.
The only place where teams don’t have control over start times is with regards to Major League road games. That applies to a small percentage of the days (less than 30%), most players won’t play in those games, and teams can always ask the home team to start later.
Or way to play out the change 10,000 times.