Don't mistake my sloppy posting for the total truth. The numbers were run. I don't have them at my fingertips, but know the numbers showed miles travelled had no impact--hence my interpretation that jetlag/hotel fatigue is either non-existent or negligible. I'll admit I don't remember if it took into account 20-game+ road trips of the olden days, but I think you're graspng at straws to say a 10-14 day trip would show zero impact, but a 20 day trip would be a major influence--especially since we have 4 hard stats that we can show small but significant influences in (ks, bb, triples, defense) with regard to even modern road trips.
That said, however, the home field advantage has been shown to be dropping over the years--so perhaps the long road trips did have an effect, and perhaps they showed up in striking out even a little more, walking even a little less, and playing even poorer defense while on the road than happens today.
Regardless, though, I think people are talking past each other here. If you tell me my team is going to strike out 1-3% more often, walk 1-3% less often, hit a few less triples, and play a little worse defense on the road, that seems like it would be enough to account for an awful lot of the 3-6 win difference most teams see as a home field advantage/road disadvantage over 81 games. The ability of the other team to tailor its team to its park seems like a pretty reasonable answer to fill in the unexplaied parts. We have lots of examples of teams trying to do just that, even in the olden days.
Still, the great fun in the discussion is that no one involved has yet been able to prove beyond mathematical doubt what the full cause of the home field advantage is...so if you want to believe jet lag is the cause of some of it, be my guest. I'll stick with the things we've learned to date. We can both be happy.
