Attendance down, dog bites man
The headline is perhaps a little dire: It’s Official: The Wheels Are Off In Seattle but here’s a short summary from Maury Brown, who’s (among other things) the co-chair of SABR’s Business of Baseball committee. Short version: yow.
Also today: the Answer Guy in the PI on the team’s “mental skills coach” plus Jason Churchill’s got a farm report on some of the system’s pitching talent.
Fallout from Everett slagging the team’s offense: Hargrove has a meeting with the hitters! The article manages to get in this subtle jab:
Hargrove is a proponent of a set lineup, but the one he’s gone with is on pace to score fewer runs than any Seattle team in a decade and a half.
Hee hee hee. It also says on the Lawton release issue that now they’re saying didn’t actually ask for a release so much as ask to be moved for an infielder who might help the team, which uh… I don’t think you can trade him yet anyway. But Matt’s happy watching hits drop around him in the outfield now, so that’s good.
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I thought that you could trade a free agent acquisition early in the season if the player agreed to the deal. Of course I could be wrong.
It always drives me a little bit nuts when Seattle is tagged as a “bandwagon” city. I don’t think it’s really that different from most cities, with a few exceptions. For example, if New York isn’t a bandwagon city, why don’t the Mets draw well when they’re losing? And in Chicago, I see empty seats in the White Sox stadium, and they just won the World Series. Do the Yankees (who don’t draw well when they’re losing, either–everyone’s just forgotten because it’s been so long) and Cubs cancel them out?
Derek, are you going to be contributing to the PI this year? I really enjoyed your columns from last year and was hoping for more (not that this isn’t a lot of work as well).
Yeah, I think Lawton just has to consent.
But even if he doesn’t, I think that only lasts until May 15, which is Monday.
ESPN’s page too has a funny article on things we wish baseball announcers would say. Hopefully I managed to format the link right, but I probably didn’t.
Like I said I probably didn’t so here’s just the straight address.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=baker/060509
I am not writing for the PI this year.
Joel’s on a roll, Larue gives Lopez some love, and Doug Waechter loves Seattle
oh, and Elaine Thompson immortalizes the smallest attendance in Safeco history. I think she got everyone in attendence.
And from the Everett Herald:
…Another Mariners minor league pitcher is hurting. Left-hander Julio Santiago of Class A Inland Empire left Sunday’s game with an arm injury after facing three hitters. Four pitchers at Class AAA Tacoma – Jeff Harris, Jesse Foppert, Scott Atchison and Thomas Oldham – are on the disabled list. …
We need to sign more switch-pitchers.
If this was a bandwagon city, would we be drawing 16,000 for a D-Rays game on a Monday night?
I mean, geez. No one slags San Francisco or Pittsburgh despite their miserable home attendance in the 90s. And no one slags Cleveland, home to various major league teams since the 19th century, for their bad draws the last few years.
If this was a bandwagon city, would we be drawing 16,000 for a D-Rays game on a Monday night?
Yup. The M’s season ticket base – who presumably are not bandwagon fans – is about 15,000.
but in a bandwagon city, don’t even the season ticket holders stay home?
I was at the game. A *LOT* of season ticket holders stayed home. When they annouce attendance they annouce paid attendance. It was empty in there. I was sitting fairly close to the fiels right off first base and I could hear the radio feed from the concourse. I could hear beer vendors three sections away clearly. I’m not that great at estimating how many people were there, but all almost all the $8 seats were empty, entire sections in the 100 level were empty and HUGE sections behind home plate were empty. It was bad.
I noticed the attendance dropoff last night, and it’s even more severe than I thought- my guess was the floor would be around 2.4 million.
Yup. The M’s season ticket base – who presumably are not bandwagon fans – is about 15,000.
That’s still a pretty good number, even with the bonanza baseball is going through right now. I think that’s about what Texas has, and they have 5M people in that metro area (to our 3M).
It does help as well that Seahawks season tickets are getting maxed out again.
FWIW, it was also damn cold last night.
in other news, the Royals designated LHP Joe Mays for assignment (how bad do you have to be?), the Rangers designated LHP Brian Shouse for assignment, and the Giants designated LHP Jeff Fassero for assignment. Not surprisingly, Jeff is fairly phlegmatic about it…
I know the Royals have been leaning on Mays the last week or so to accept a demotion to Omaha. A WHIP of 2.20 and an ERA of 10.27 over six starts? Hey, someone to make Meche look good.
Delmon Young got 50 games for the bat toss.
Wait, are ther seriously 15,000 season ticket holders? That means only one thousand people bought tickets to this game. Wow.
Factors on low attendance:
Monday
Cold
Devil Rays
and then…
Performance
And remember season ticket holders can trade tickets away for other games, so it’s not necessarily the case that they are eating season tickets.
I dare Chuck Armstrong to criticize the Cleveland approach now.
how sad when this is your obit headline: “Delsing, pinch runner for midget, dead at 80″
Ms announced attendance is ticket sales, not turnstile count. So if the Ms say the count was 16,000, that number includes no-shows. Actual attendance can be far less.
Until 1993, the National League based attendance on the turnstile, not on paid attendance. The AL went to paid attendance because they used to be the league that drew fewer fans, so going by who paid padded their numbers nicely. The NL always drew more because they had teams in larger locales than the AL (esp. when the NL moved to San Fran and LA, confining the AL to expansion teams in Oakland and Orange County (once that stadium was built).
In ‘93, though, the NL switched to paid, and thus the Rockies used those numbers to shatter attendance records.
In “other” news from around the league according to Rototimes:
The International League suspended Delmon Young (OF) TB for 50 games on Tuesday, two weeks after an incident in which Young threw his bat at the home plate umpire, according to ESPN. League president Randy Mobley said that he was unable to determine for certain if Young intended to hit the umpire. “If I had, I would have suspended him for the entire season,” Mobley reportedly told ESPN.com’s Buster Olney.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/attendance
SEA: 26,429
CLE: 24,133
Those numbers could flip by Monday, since the TB series will drag the M’s average down, AND Cleveland will have a weekend series which could bump their average up.
Cleveland’s attendance last year: just over two million. M’s pace for this year: 2.1 million. Difference between Cleveland’s payroll this year and M’s payroll this year: 30 million.
You could argue that the M’s approach of not conducting a fire sale after 2003 like Cleveland did in 2001 was a reasonable risk…but the problem is that having flubbed the “we’ll rebuild on the fly with free agents and farm system” approach, the net result is that the added revenue from “not breaking faith with the fans” is in the pockets of Jeff Cirillo, Kevin Jarvis, Scott Spiezio, Rich Aurilia, etc., instead of actually doing anything to IMPROVE the product on the field, AND having to do the same kind of attendance rebuild Cleveland is doing anyway.
And remember season ticket holders can trade tickets away for other games, so it’s not necessarily the case that they are eating season tickets.
BTW, if you ever wonder what benefit it is to be a season ticket holder, this is one, that and getting your tickets under the public rate.
Oh, and getting your picture taken with the Moose on a freezing day in November for the Christmas card.
And… that’s about it. Oh, you can watch the M’s suck.
Re: bandwagon fans. My wife says “why SHOULD I pay to go see a crappy team? If they want me to go, maybe they should get some better players.” She has a point. Do you really want to root for a team that knows they don’t have to try?
huh?
Just out of curiousity, what was the last time the M’s drew that few fans? They were drawing fairly decently in the last days of the Kingdome, as I recall.
Just out of curiousity, what was the last time the M’s drew that few fans? They were drawing fairly decently in the last days of the Kingdome, as I recall.
I looked up the first M’s game I went to. 15,526.
Ah, see the attendance is actually a clever rouse by the M’s to remind us of good ol ‘95.
Perusing Retrosheet, I think I have the answer to my own question.
15,626 paid to see Bob Wolcott lose 2-0 to Jose Parra and the Minnesota Twins on May 7, 1996 at the Kingdome. Bragg, Amaral, Cora, Sojo, Griffey, Edgar, Buhner, Sorrento, Wilson, Rodriguez, Russ Davis, Wolcott, Jackson, Tim Davis, and Carmona played. That was only game that year with attendance lower than yesterday’s. Just over a decade.
Steve T:
Do you really want to root for a team that knows they don’t have to try?
That, to me, is the definition of a bandwagon fan (Please don’t misunderstand – I’m not judging, or calling names; i’m just trying to better define “bandwagon”) – the Mariners are the team that they are, and you either like them despite of that or, as suggested by this comment, ignore them until they get better.
That’s an awfully cyclical way to be a fan, to me, and it’s not something I can do; I don’t think that the M’s, as currently constituted, are much good, but I can’t just put aside the fact that I really like the Mariners and have done for 20 years. So to me, someone that can put that aside, and can ignore them until they get better, is a bandwagon fan.
Again, don’t misread my tone; I’m not disparaging the bandwagon fan, I’m just sayin’.
Dw: I found one a year later.
But by paying a team money when they suck, you are rewarding suckitude. If enough people do that, the team stops trying to win and just tries to be, you know, competitive. So by being a diehard, you’re making the team worse. That’s the flip side of that coin.
My fear is not that the Mariners haven’t been trying to win because they feel they can count on M’s fans to show up anyway.
My fear is they have been trying but they are merely incompetent.
While we’re talking about player transactions, Billy Beane called up Jeremy “We Aren’t Selling Jeans Here” Brown from the Moneyball Draft today. He’ll be up as long as Kendall is suspended, I assume.
But by paying a team money when they suck, you are rewarding suckitude. If enough people do that, the team stops trying to win and just tries to be, you know, competitive.
You have a point; everyone always brings up the Cubs as Exhibit A in this argument, and I admit I don’t have a good counter for it.
I just wonder whether there’s a line to be drawn by Mariner brass that says “if we consistently draw less than X fans per year, we’ll blow it up and start again, a la Cleveland”, or whether they just say “If we draw less than X fans per year, we give up. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Kansas City West. Where’s my revenue sharing?”
It’s obvious that line hasn’t been breached yet, but I wonder if the current M’s FO will even see it when it’s crossed.
Do not equate refusing to shell out $38 per ticket to watch Gil Meche and Carl Everett with being a bandwagon fan.
Let’s keep all this in perspective, though. The M’s aren’t the Royals or the Devil Rays. They ARE reinvesting.
I don’t think we should confuse making bad decisions with not trying.
We have a payroll to be competetive.
Outside of refusing to add to the payroll when it really could have made a difference, I can’t say that they are purposefully not trying to win.
I am upset with them for the quality of their decisions, but I can’t claim they are horrible, cheapskate owners.
This whole bandwagon fan thing is pretty dumb, in my opinion. Every town is full of bandwagon fans. Ok, ok, site the Cubs as a shining example of non-bandwagon fans. Do you really think they fill up Wrigley year after stinking year of people wanting to watch a not-so-hot baseball team? No. In many places, the thing to do, the cool place to be, the social event of the day, is the sporting event.
Look at the NFL, and I’ll take my home town of Buffalo as the example. The Bills stink. They’ve stunk for a while, now. But they keep selling out. Why? Everyone knows it is because every game is a huge party. It’s a huge social event. And that is where Buffalonians have decided to spend their (few) entertainment dollars.
In other sports and other cities, teams can only become that cool place to be when they are good. Otherwise, why would it be cool to go to a bad team’s game?
So I don’t think Cubs fans are any better than Mariners fans. I just think that in Chicago, a Cubs game is a cool place to be. In Seattle, a Mariners game is a cool place to be, if they are good. If they aren’t its much cooler to be bike riding or hiking in those mountains I’m still wondering why I left.
I agree with the sentiment, Grizz. I follow the team, watch them on TV, and even keep up somewhat with their minor league prospects. But, I am a grad student w/o much disposable income (read: any) and I refuse to go down to Safeco and watch this…its painful.
So, if I’m a “bandwagon fan,” then all that means is that a “true” fan is one who shells out money no matter what quality and value they receive for those dollars.
Football is a bit different. It’s a once a week event, falls on a lazy sunday, and doesn’t entail being out until midnight on a school/work night after factoring in driving home.
Anybody know the breakdown of attendence per Mariners starter?
“Bandwagon fan” is a little like “clutch hitter” in that it’s hard to agree on what it means, and it’s used to describe different things in different cases. Is a bandwagon fan one who only pays attention during the playoffs? Is it someone who only supports a winning team? How do you define a winning team?
Is it everyone who didn’t support a team during it’s darkest years (like the Behring years for the Seahawks or the pre-Junior years for the Mariners)? How long do you have to be on the bandwagon before you’re a “real fan”?
And what is a bandwagon, anyway?
In regard to future pitchers, it’s just too bad the M’s can’t land this guy: http://tinyurl.com/f26t6
“He struck out 16 hitters, setting the Pacific-10 Conference record for career strikeouts (460). He struck out the side three times.
In the fifth inning, he struck out three of OSU’s best contact hitters in a row. Looking.
And if that weren’t bad enough, he struck out four in his eighth and last inning. One of the batters reached first base when strike three skipped past Huskies catcher Matt Lane.
And the clincher: His 146th and last pitch of the game, a high swinging third strike to Shea McFeely, was clocked at 95 mph. “
44 The NFL has always been just once a week. And this huge boom in the NFL is rather recent (last 7-8 years). They’ve managed to become and entire entertainment business. But that’s an entirely different discussion.
I don’t think you want to be salivating over a college pitcher who’s allowed to throw 146 pitches in a game.
That guy’s almost certain to undergo TJ surgery in the next couple of years, if not worse.
i think if you have followed the Mariners for the last 2.5-3 years, then you are automatically exempted from Bandwagon status.
Anyway, too often people assume there are only two categories of fans: Bandwagon and hardcore.
That guy’s almost certain to undergo TJ surgery in the next couple of years, if not worse.
With that and his UDub degree, tell me how he’s NOT going to be drafted in the first round by the M’s.
Do not equate refusing to shell out $38 per ticket to watch Gil Meche and Carl Everett with being a bandwagon fan.
Or you could pay $7 for a CF seat and move wherever you want.
Look at Lincecum’s mechanics. They are tres messy.
That guy’s almost certain to undergo TJ surgery in the next couple of years, if not worse.
That’s certainly very likely, but not 100% for sure. Didn’t Matsuzaka throw 200+ pitches in a 17 inning start in HS? And his pitch counts remain pretty high today, despite being a power pitcher with a pretty small frame. Besides, any pitcher the M’s draft is likely to have one surgery or another.
Is it everyone who didn’t support a team during it’s darkest years (like the Behring years for the Seahawks or the pre-Junior years for the Mariners)? How long do you have to be on the bandwagon before you’re a “real fan�
First, you’re right – it’s hard to define these things. But, to me, a bandwagon fan is an inconsistent fan – they watch when it’s good, because it’s easy to like a team when they’re good, and they don’t watch when it’s not so good, because it’s harder for the casual fan to find something to latch onto in the lean years.
Again, I’m not trying to pass judgment – people can be whatever kind of fan they want to be. I’m just trying to help define the terms.
And what is a bandwagon, anyway?
Bandwagon.
Or you could pay $7 for a CF seat and move wherever you want.
For the one game I did attend this year, those tickets were sold out (and attendance that night did not exceed 30,000). Seriously, there are only a couple thousand $7 seats, and according to the nice lady at the ticket window, they go quickly.
Every franchise has bandwagon fans.
Here, let’s go to 1991 and do the infamous Team A- Team B comparison as a demonstration.
AL Team A attendance: 1,863,733
AL Team B attendance: 2,147,905
Team A is the New York Yankees. Team B is the Seattle Mariners.
Or how about this one from 1998?
AL Team A attendance: 2,651,511
AL Team B attendance: 2,314,704
Team A is the Seattle Mariners. Team B is the AL Wild Card winners, the Boston Red Sox.
Of interest to “Moneyball†fans: Jeremy Brown was called up by Oakland.
He was killing the ball in Sac-Town after three years in the Texas League doldrums. Maybe he’ll stick.
Another significant portion of the team’s revenue comes from their TV & radio contracts. Does anyone know when those deals come up for renewal? I remember reading on this board that TV viewership was still high, which means they could still generate a lot of revenue from this crap product even with attendance slipping.
Does anyone have any insight into the TV & radio deals, how much revenue they get from it, and how much they might expect to get in the future? Thanks!
Do not equate refusing to shell out $38 per ticket to watch Gil Meche and Carl Everett with being a bandwagon fan.
or pay less and watch the other 23 guys.
I was thinking about this ‘bandwagon’ issue just the other day when that story about Guardado was the #1 most-read story on seattletimes.com. In a town full of bandwagon fans years removed from seeing a competitive team, a story about whether or not a pitcher is designated ‘closer’ or ’setup guy’ would never be the #1 story in the newspaper. So people here are definitely following the M’s closely, even though the team’s sucked for a long time, and continues to suck in a most predictable and depressing fashion. Meanwhile, USSM had to sell t-shirts and upgrade to a new hosting service so they could handle the bandwidth they were getting – what’s that say about fan interest in this crappy team?
For me the ultimate example of bandwagon fans is from back in the 90s – people showing up in sports bars on Sundays all over America wearing their brand-new Dallas Cowboys jerseys. Oh, how I hated those people.
Re:Cowboy jerseys — exactly!
If you live in a city and that city’s sports teams do well, it shouldn’t be called “bandwagon-ing” (i don’t think anyone uses that term anyway, so we’re safe). I jumped on the Seahawks bandwagon last year and I am proud of it. The team played well. Its called hometown pride. Am I supposed to ignore them simply because I used to not care?
If you want to talk about bandwagon, let’s talk about how every city in America has “diehard” NY Yankee and Boston Red Sox fans. Who are these people? I mean, if you grew up in those cities going to games with your dad, fine, but I get the feeling that it is fashionable to cheer for these teams and these folks want to portray themselves as backers. If those teams sucked for 3 years, I bet people wouldn’t be yelling “Go Sawks!” every chance they get.
I always wonder where the handful of Devil Rays fans you see at Safeco come from. Are they tourists who were tired of paying too little for beer? Did they fall in love with the Rays during their short existence and then move here, refusing to give up their 8-year history? Did they decide to give up on the Mariners at some point, and make a horrible mistake on which team to start following?
62 – Why does it matter where you’re from? Or where you live?
Ivan Rodriguez is starting at 1st base for the Tigers tonight. just what sort of vertical leap do you think Pudge has?
Actually, most of the diehard Yankees and Red Sox fans I’ve met here in Seattle and the Bay Area came by it honestly — they either grew up in the northeast, lived there at some point, or married someone who was a fan of those teams. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that some Cubs with no connection to Chicago (and pre-2004 Red Sox fans with no connection to Boston) actually adopted the team because they liked cheering for a team that was sure to disappoint them, in the same perverse way there’s always some guy chasing a woman who’s taken / out of his league / absolutely uninterested.
As for me, I followed the Mariners as much as I could ‘77-87 or so; I’ll still watch them on TV over dinner, but I figure I’ve done my time and they’ll get my butt in a seat at Safeco again when they’ve gone back to fielding a good team (summer weekday day games with Felix pitching the only exception). I don’t know if that makes me a bandwagon fan or not, and quite frankly I don’t give a damn.
Speaking of day games with Felix starting, I wish he was pitching tomorrow instead of tonight. I’d seriously consider going to that game (if for no other reason than it’s only going to be on the radio, so I don’t have the option of switching media halfway through the game to avoid Rizzs).
Ivan Rodriguez is starting at 1st base for the Tigers tonight. just what sort of vertical leap do you think Pudge has?
I’m not sure “leap” is the right word. “slight upward motion”, maybe?
He can raise his glove above his head. That’s as good as it gets.
My dad’s a Yankees fan who grew up in Montana, but when the M’s don’t exist yet, the nearest franchise is like Milwaukee (or wait, didn’t they get the Pilots? Probably KC or SF then), and you can root for Mickey Mantle, I can see how he came by his fandom.
That understanding of why he likes them doesn’t prevent me from gloating whenever they’re behind in the East, though. And to his credit he converted me to Seahawks-love back in the Dave Krieg years, of all times.
RE: #63 about where Devil Rays fans come from…
I remember about 6-7 years ago on the “official” M’s message board a smegmalicious-like crank who rarely had anything good to say about the M’s announced he was moving to Tampa, and he was happy to abandon the Mariners to adopt his new favorite team, the Devil Rays, and ha ha all you sucker M’s fans…!!!!
I think of him wallowing in his despair, and I just smile…
He’s probably moved on to New York by now. Things have a way of finding their natural home. Cream rises and other… things, well, don’t.
Ed,
My dad has the same story – grew up in South Dakota in the 30’s, so he figured he could pick any team, so he took Ruth and Gehrig, etc. But now, and I don’t know if this makes him a bandwagon fan or not, in 2001, when I told him I had World Series tickets *if* the M’s went to the series and that I’d take him, well, he was happy to root against the Yanks then. And just to confuse people, he’ll sometimes go around wearing an M’s jacket and a Yankees cap.
But anyway, the whole bandwagon M’s fan thing seems overdone. I have season tickets and I watch more games when they’re winning and fewer games when they’re losing. When they’re winning, every game matters because they’re fighting for a playoff spot (or, in 2001 when they had a playoff spot wrapped up by, oh, now, they were fighting to break a record). When they’re so bad that thinking of the playoffs is a cruel joke, individual games don’t matter so much – just check in every once in a while to see if Beltre’s figured out how to hit again, or if Felix is doing anything exceptional.
you gotta love it– some guy just called KJR to ask Tim Kurkjian (with voice quivering with barely repressed rage) how close was the Reed for Arroya deal, and should Bill Bavasi be fired just for not getting that deal done? Tim gently pointed out that his understanding was that the deal was no where as close as some had reported, and that it was the Sox who felt that Reed wouldn’t provide enough offense in the outfield in trade for one of their pitchers….
oh, and someone else just proposed Nageotte & Reed to the Nationals for Jose Guillen.
And speaking of the Yankees — they’ve gone to Ron Villone in a blow-out loss (3-11) to the Red Sox. One out, two men on . . . why does this feel so familiar?
KAern: I know this thread is dead, but I resent that. I’m a die hard M’s fan who’s been going to games since the early 80’s. I love the team and hate to see them suck. Just because I bitch about the things they do that I don’t like or the thing I don’t understand that seem to actively be making the team worse doesn’t mean I’m any less of a fan. I go to about 20 games a year and scream myself hoarse cheering for the only sports team I like.
Complaining about the things I don’t like doesn’t make me less of a fan.
Enjoy Lincecum while you can. He’s pitching for his signing bonus, but a guy with his usage, hideous mechanics, and velocity is highly likely to explode in the near future. Let someone else draft him; we can pick him up after the T-J in a modest deal.
I’m very interested in Santiago and Lowe pitching in the minors, although hearing that Julio is hurt is worrisome indeed.
Is LaHair for real? I’ve been waiting for the Future Forty update to see a glimmer on the guy, but a LH hitting 1Bman with power who walks? In _this_ organization??? I can dream, but this one would be a sweet vision indeed.
Part of being a long-time fan is finding things to like in an organization when some of the things in the foreground are ugly. The Seattle club’s offense is offensive. The empty seats are ugly. But I can still get interested in hopefuls coming up through the minors, the upcoming draft, and the skill refinement of young guys who’ve made the Big Club. I may tune out stretches of games now, but I’ll still be looking in on guys like Betancourt, Lopez, Soriano, Sherrill, Felix, DOYLE!, but LaHair, Santiago, Kahn, Cabreara, Jones, and Clement, too.
Find something to like; the FO’s floundering can’t suck all of the joy out of it. —Unless you’re in KC or Pittsburgh, but they need some mob action there.