With all due respect to you as a highly respected and successful former professional athlete, your specialty of baseball is obviously different than certain other sports like basketball, when hours of traveling long distances by plane or bus can have more of a negative effect on leg and joint inflammation/fatigue, circulation, lactic acid levels in legs, etc, due to the nature of the sport... The fact that basketball is played on a harder surface can result in more joint stress as well, that requires more time to resolve..
So in some cases, less time off and having to travel long distances prior to a game may have a greater negative effect on performance in certain sports (those that require more continuous stress and subsequent lactic acid accumulation in the leg muscles and inflammation in the leg muscles and joints), and especially when the sport involves little rest for the athlete during the course of the game, like in basketball, soccer, etc.