Cleveland and Pittsburgh are seeing increases in attendance this season as the two franchises are surprisingly competing for division titles. Along with big gains by the Giants and Rangers in light of their pennants, the two small market teams are helping to negate the Dodgers drag on attendance this season. The Nationals averaged 24,900 on their latest ten date (11 game) homestand, 2500 more than their average this season as they climbed to .500. With the big exception of Tampa Bay, winning brings out the fans.
With 18 clubs down in attendance, Tampa Bay is hardly the only .500+ club with an attendance decline. From baseball-reference.com, the per-game declines for winning teams…
Braves -3,650
Mets -3,197
Rays -3,012
D-backs -1,923
Yankees -1,671
Tigers -1,175
Angels -681
Red Sox -15
Okay, the Red Sox don’t count. But some of these are really depressing. The Braves deserve a lot better, for instance. Even the Mets are hardly horrible and deserve some more support. The Yankees are arguably the best team in baseball.
At least the overall attendance picture is looking up. Things were grim before interleague, but baseball is now down only a couple hundred thousand on the b-r tracker. Of course, MLB is coming off three years of declines, but you gotta start somewhere.
Casey Abell » Some of those teams, like the Yankees, Angels and Red Sox, have high attendance anyway. I really don’t understand why the Braves are down so much.