Yankees’ travel decision ‘a good move,’ SBU sleep expert says

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Don’t sleep on the Yankees doing what they think is in the best interest of their players.

The Yankees, after their loss in Game 2 of the ALDS on Monday night, decided not to fly to Kansas City until Tuesday afternoon for Wednesday night’s pivotal Game 3 against the Royals.

The Yankees worked out at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday instead of flying late Monday and having a workout at Kauffman Stadium, where they haven’t played since winning three of four in June.

Manager Aaron Boone said there were many factors to the decision. The Yankees wanted to get a good night’s sleep in their own beds, which a sleep behavior expert from Stony Brook University said was “absolutely” the right thing to do.

The Yankees also wanted to see Marcus Stroman throw a live bullpen session on Tuesday in the Bronx and have other players use their facilities.

And they wanted to avoid Taylor Swift.

Well, not specifically Swift. But the pop star attended Monday Night Football in Kansas City along with 70,000 other fans, so the hotels in the Kansas City area were pretty full on Monday night.

Asked about a possible Swift effect on the Yankees’ travel plans, Boone shook it off.

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know about that . . . I think some of it was with Monday Night Football going on, there was some hotel stuff that was a little bit of an issue. But [we] kind of just weighed getting in at 3 in the morning or knowing on a playoff night it could be a late night and you go home and sleep in your bed. Just kind of decided let’s sleep in our own bed and get off in the afternoon.”

Lauren Hale, a professor and sleep behavior expert in the Department of Family Population & Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine, said the Yankees hit a home run with their decision to wait until Tuesday to make the three- to four-hour flight to Kansas City.

“I agree that it was a good move to travel on Tuesday,” Hale told Newsday. “This is the better strategy. They should be traveling during the day.”