Okay, after tonight’s Game 6 performance a post about the San Francisco Giants’ sleep patterns might not be quite the thing it would be if they’d won, but still, this piece in the Mercury News still caught my eye:

Instead of hopping on a plane right after a playoff game, as ball clubs have traditionally done — and as the Royals have done in this Series — the Giants now send players to bed for the night and head out late the next morning. It’s a subtle change the Giants made a few years ago after consulting with Dr. Chris Winter, the medical director of the Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Va.

The first experiment came in 2010 … which happens to be the year the Giants won the World Series for the first time in San Francisco history. They have since emerged among the greatest road warriors October has ever seen….

Instead of flying back after Game 2 of the World Series, for example, the team lounged in Kansas City until 12:30 p.m. the next day. The Giants did not head back for the upcoming Game 6 until about 11 a.m. on Monday.

Groeschner reasons that it’s akin to making sure players eat right. Proper sleep means proper recovery from often draining games, and proper recovery might make the difference at a time of the year when every play is magnified.

And what do the players thing? Catcher Buster Posey said,

“I really like it…. I don’t know what time it is right now, but I figure if we left tonight we’d get in at 3 or 4 a.m. — maybe.

“I know flying later kind of eats up the whole next day, but it’s nice to get a full night’s sleep.”

Brandon Belt, the Giants’ first baseman, is a reluctant believer.

“At first I was kind of like, ‘This doesn’t make much sense,’ ” he said. “We’d been doing something different the entire time. After doing it again the other day, I noticed I felt a lot better. I think it definitely helps us.”

Winter, incidentally, isn’t the only sleep researcher who works with sports teams. Charles Czeisler, who consults with the NBA and NHL, was profiled in The Atlantic earlier this year. Interestingly, Czeisler argues that because sleep is so important in consolidating memories and helping your mind make sense of recent events, getting lots of sleep can be really valuable during a series:

For the teams he advises, sleep is never more important than in extended series, like the potential seven-game bouts that NBA and National Hockey League (NHL) teams are embarking on this week as the playoffs for both sports begin.

“You notice some teams seem to learn the moves of the other team, so they can actually counter their offense more effectively in later games,” he explains. “So that team that might’ve lost the first few games starts winning.”