Wouldn’t they get tired after playing so many games, not to mention all the jet lag from flying around so much?
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They fly charter flights, have staff to take care of all the travel logistics for them, have road trips that are logical and don’t skip time zones too much, and the most important point:
Baseball is wonderful, but most of it is just standing around.
I mean…at most they’re only flying forward of backward 3 hours. I would not consider that nearly enough to really get jet lag in the first place.
Baseball is a relatively low intensity sport with a lot of unpredictability. In most cases, the players only need to really run for about 5-10 seconds every 2-3 minutes. Not to mention when your team is batting there is literally nothing for you to do but sit and rest in the dugout unless you’re batting or on base
First, they fly charter flights on planes meant for 200 people but configured for like 50. And don’t have to deal with TSA and such like flying commercial.
Travel and schedule is also regulated by collective bargaining agreement, so, for example a team would never be required to fly from East coast to west coast without an off day between games; day games are typically at end of series for earlier travel before game in new city next day; teams tend to go on multi-city road trips when flying to opposite coast, so Yankees might fly out west and play six games in Seattle and Oakland on the west coast, stop in Denver on the way back vs a single series cross country.
The timezones aren’t that drastic. For example if you finish a game at 9pm EST and have a game the next day at 7pm PST, that’s 19 hours in between the two games. Also they tend to charter jets to fly the entire team around since it’s not just the players, but the trainers, coaches, medical personnel & management.
The comments have nailed the way they travel and restrictions around it, but there’s another element that is missing from some of these answers, which is that they do get tired.
Baseball is an incredibly difficult sport, and part of that is because the season is so long. At 162 games it’s the longest regular season of any sport I am aware of. We’re coming up on September, the final month of the regular season, and most teams still have around 30 games left to play before the playoffs start. It’s very common to see players or teams fall off in the second half of the season because it is so long.
The planes they take are all business-class, plus thanks to so many night games, they are on a weird schedule. Games end around 10, bus to the airport leaves at 11, you get right on the plane and go. At most you’ll be flying 4 or 5 hours, which if you’re heading east to west means you’ll arrive around 2 am local time. Get to the hotel by 2:30 am, sleep until 10 or 11, get to the field by 1 or 2 for your night game.
If a team if flying from the west coast to east coast, they will almost always have an early game of the following day off. so leave Los Angeles at 5 pm local time, arrive in NYC at 3 am local time, sleep until noon, then get to the field at 2 for your night game. Teams will also tend to not travel crazy distances. They’ll play the Dodgers, Giants, and Mariners all in one trip, then have a day off after they fly back home.
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