Trying not to doze off during work meetings is part of our shared human experience, isn’t it? (Don’t try to deny it.)

Spring Training brings an endless cascade of early morning meetings for players and coaches to supplement the hours of drills and games in the hot Florida sun, so it certainly sounds as though the Twins had some degree of worry about the level of engagement they would get when they brought in two doctors and a healthcare CEO for a presentation about … well, sleep.

Instead, the slideshow presentation entitled “Sleep Coaching and Circadian Training” that was primed on a television in the middle of the clubhouse at 9 a.m. by Dr. Michael Howell, Dr. Jonathan Parker and Brian Sauer generated so much interest among the Twins’ roster that what was expected to be a 30-minute meeting turned into nearly double that, followed by numerous individual inquiries and side conversations.

“A lot of times, you put some experts in front of a group and they talk to the group, the group listens for the most part, and that’s the end of the conversation,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Our guys were very engaged.”

“The whole room was just ping-ponging questions, and it was like, ‘Oh, we didn't even have to tee that up,’” president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said.

The presentation given on behalf of the Sleep Performance Institute (SPI) focused on why sleep is important to performance -- with tangible examples of measurable drops due to lack of sleep -- along with baseball-specific plans regarding how to align circadian rhythms to provide peak performance for both night and day games, as well as tools for self-assessing sleep problems.

There has been some involvement on the Minor League side and situations in which athletic teams would reach out to SPI regarding specific individual cases, said Howell, a neurologist and the division head of sleep medicine at the University of Minnesota. The Twins reached out to them regarding a more formalized presentation this year -- also bringing in Parker, a dentist who specializes in dental sleep medicine, and Sauer, the CEO of Gem Health, which specializes in sleep apnea.

“Great athletic performance is brain performance,” Howell said. “What you’re looking at when you’re looking at a great athlete is, you’re looking at amazing brain activity. There is a very limited amount of things you can do to improve that activity. However, one of them is sleep.”

Baseball offers a particularly steep challenge in that regard, considering the season-long rotation between night games and day games, often involving multiple short rest periods per week between a night game and a subsequent day game.

The goal is to provide different strategies and technologies to help players be at their most effective whenever they need to be their best. That involves blue light-blocking glasses, melatonin and other supplements when they’re appropriate, timing exercises and naps, identifying and mitigating sleep disorders and even something as simple as seeing the sun at various times throughout the day.

“It's all about giving them some parameters,” Parker said. “It's not going to be perfect. Some days, it varies.”

From mental skills coaching to nutritional plans, from biomechanics specialists to mental health professionals, the Twins have continued to expand the resources available to those within their orbit -- and it helps set the tone when their highest-paid and most prominent player, Carlos Correa, is among several players who visibly take diligent notes in a notebook, establishing the expectation of using all means at one’s disposal to optimize performance.

Correa said he intends on trying the blue light-blocking glasses and special lamps in the morning, taking notes on how he feels to gauge how, and to what extent, those will apply to his routine moving forward.

“I love it,” Correa said. “All the information is great. I have all the notes in my notebook and I like to just apply them and learn from everybody that comes here to speak. … It's good to know, and it makes you look cool in front of your kids, to talk about circadian rhythm.”

He wasn’t the only one; questions sprang from all corners of the clubhouse, spanning topics regarding naps, supplements to promote healthy sleep, substances to avoid that might negatively impact sleep, or how to foster healthy sleep habits while spending time with their young children.

The understanding of sleep’s quantitative impact on athletic performance has continued to evolve over the years, and the evidence has mounted in that time.

“If we can extend their sleep and improve their sleep by even 45 minutes, [that could give them] 5% faster speed, 6% faster reaction time,” Parker said. “Split-second decision-making, which is plate discipline, improves dramatically. Their mood’s better, their visual-tracking is better, and all these things that are performance factors or parameters related to baseball performance are improved.”

And that’s where the Twins seek another advantage.

“It’s up to the players to engage in this, but I hope that we’ve created an expectation in this organization that we’re going to ask you to be the best you can be, and we’re going to surround you with the best resources possible,” Falvey said. “We hope you take advantage.”

Please keep Ryan and Lexi Jeffers in your thoughts.

The Twins’ catcher and his wife shared via Instagram on Friday that a 20-week scan revealed no heartbeat in their unborn son ahead of his anticipated July due date, and they are in the midst of grieving the loss of that child, Mason Michael Jeffers.

Jeffers remains away from the team and with his family.

“I will say that all of our hearts are obviously with Ryan and Lexi right now,” Baldelli said. “The most difficult of situations that any human, any person can even imagine. … I’m not concerned with or even thinking about his return to the baseball field at all. We’re just there to support him right now, support them right now, and that’s it.”

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