Phillies and Braves are experiencing climate change firsthand, and it may affect their play

The Phillies and the Atlanta Braves reputedly are among the elite teams of major-league baseball, but if the quality of play at Citizens Bank Park during their season-opening series doesn’t quite measure up to expectations, go gentle on the booing.

These players are experiencing a form of abrupt climate change, says Struan Coleman, a sports medicine specialist who practices in New York and Philly.

When the Phillies left Clearwater, Fla., after their final spring training game Monday, the high was 83 degrees, and daily highs since the team began playing their practice games in Florida on Feb. 25 have averaged about 80.

When the Braves ended their exhibition season Tuesday, the high was 86 in North Port, Fla., home of CoolToday Park (seriously, that’s what it’s called), their spring training home.

Perhaps more significant is that the air masses on the Florida Gulf Coast are considerably steamier than they are around here, at levels we more commonly associate with summer.

» READ MORE: Check out the Inquirer's Phillies preview

By contrast, when the teams take the field Friday, after Thursday’s rainout, the air temperatures will be in the mid-50s, with the air holding well less than half the moisture of those spring-training sites. In addition, the forecasts call for sustained winds of 20 mph howling in from left-centerfield, gusting to 35 mph throughout the game.

One comprehensive study documented that such a degree of coolness can affect the quality of play. The early season can be particularly challenging for hitters. “It’s more about the cold rather than the rustiness,” study co-author Brandon Koch, a statistics professor at the University of Minnesota, said Tuesday.

Plus, such a radical change in air masses, says Coleman, an orthopedic surgeon who is a medical consultant for the New York Mets, is more than just a matter of comfort for the players: It can be hazardous.

“It’s something that’s probably not focused on enough, and talked about enough,” he said.

Baseball is unique among the major sports because so many teams in the northern and colder cities spend several weeks training and working on their tans in warm climates and then open the season in places like, say, Philadelphia, in late March.

» READ MORE: The Phils suffered a rash of hamstring injuries a few years back

It is unique in another way, says Coleman: “Baseball is the one sport where you go from absolute standstill to absolute sprint.” A batter hits the ball and then bolts out of the box. That is a leading cause of hamstring pulls, especially in the cold.

“When it’s colder, you lose elasticity in your muscles,” he said. “If there’s less elasticity, you’re more likely to tear the muscles.

“Clearly, the beginning of the season you would see more hamstring injuries.”

One analysis identified 2,633 baseball hamstring injuries in the 2011 to 2016 period. Of those, 40% occurred in April or May. They happened once every 26 games in those months, compared with once every 42 games in July and August.

He added that injuries to oblique muscles, the ones in our sides that give our trunks their twist, are common among hitters when it’s chilly.

Ironically, he said, hydration can be a bigger problem in the cold than in the heat, and that has an impact on muscle flexibility. When it’s cold, the body doesn’t crave water as it does in the heat, when “you have more natural water in your body.

‘It’s counterintutive,” He added, “you can get really dehydrated in the cold” and “muscles are more likely to tear.”

He said training staffs are well aware of the problems that can come with a change in climates and do what they can to help players adjust, but they can’t eliminate the hazards.

» READ MORE: The Phils last year did well at avoiding injuries among pitchers

Players can do nothing about the effects of the cold on the batted ball. Alan Nathan, a University of Illinois professor emeritus, has calculated that every degree Fahrenheit on average equates to about a four-inch difference in the flight of the ball. Well, it is a game of inches.

» READ MORE: The Phillies had decent weather in the Diamondbacks series, but the bats went cold

However, it is often difficult to see the direct effects of temperature on hitters because so many other variables are in play, such as the quality of the pitching.

Going beyond homers, Koch and Anna K. Panorska, a mathematician and statistician at the University of Nevada, where Koch had studied, looked at statistics for more than 22,000 games at major-league parks over 12 seasons, ending in 2011.

They found that teams scored 12% more runs when it was “warm” — that is, higher than 83 degrees — compared with when it was “cold,” or less than 60 degrees.

Home teams batted .256 when it was cold, compared with .276 when warm. The visiting teams hit .235 in the cold, compared with .261.

While temperature may benefit pitchers, cold may have had a downside for their control: They issued more walks when it was chilly.

“Climate in baseball is incredibly important,” said Coleman, who practices at the Vincera Institute in Philadelphia, “and something that should be looked at and discussed more carefully.” He added that he would like to interest the Phillies in an analysis of the relationship of weather and sports injuries.

For the record, when the slumping Phillies lost the National League Championship Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks in October, under the Panorska-Koch criteria, they couldn’t blame the weather for their cold bats.

The high that day in Philly was 69.