Just for reference, the Expos drew their last five years (2000 to 2004) averages of 11435, 7935 (those teams won 67 and 68 games), 10025 in 2002, a 33% increase as the team won 83 games and Vlad Guerrero flirted with a 40-40 season, 12662 in 2003 but remember they played 22 games in Puerto Rico where they averaged over 14000. If my math is correct, they drew 8459 in Montreal, a drop of 15%. Not surprising as MLB kept saying the team would move “soon”, playing in PR, not allowing them to expand rosters in September to save money which would have been nothing really as the team was owned by MLB. Oh, and the team was in the wild card race as late as September 1. They were actually tied with a couple other teams in late August.
In 2004 their last year, the average was 9254 but I can’t find a number for PR attendance and don’t wish to put in the time and effort to calculate it, although I saw it was at least 10% less. I suspect the average in Montreal was around 8500 so Oakland is doing a bit better so far but likely will drop like a stone now. I heard there were less than 4000 recently. Expos home opener in 2004 was just under 15000, by far their worst opener. Their last home game drew 31,000 which was 6.6% of their total in that one game.
It’s going to be quite empty in Oakland this year. I fully expect this to be their last year.
Twins beat the Nats 3-1 in 2 hours, 13 minutes. I wonder how long it will be before we get the first sub-two-hour game. (Or has there been one already?)
I’m happy with the pitch clock but if I forked over $100 for good seats I wonder how happy I’d be with just two hours of entertainment at $50/hour.
I’d be pleased not to have to sit there for an extra hour of pitchers dawdling on the mound and batters constantly stepping out to readjust their gloves and do additional fussing. The games I saw in Florida this spring ran more like 2:40, which is plenty enough time to go for food, refreshment and a bathroom visit.
Masataka Yoshida might be settling in for the Red Sox. He hit two home runs in the 8th inning, the second a grand slam to definitively put the game away. 6 RBIs on the day.
Agreed. It’s like feeling that a 3-hour movie is a better value for your dollar than a 2 or 2.5 hour movie, when the additional 30 to 60 minutes is advertising or a blank screen.
I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t mind lingering at the ballpark on a warm summer night. I’d like the game to last at least as long as it takes me to get there, park, and return home.
In person, I don’t care how slow the game goes. Watching on tv, I very much prefer the faster pace.
I can’t find a cite, but I recently read that somewhere in the minors they’re testing a new DH rule. If your starter doesn’t last 5 innings, you give up the DH. I like that idea as I despise the strategy of using “openers” for the starter.
I actually like the opener, mostly because for fantasy it’s annoying when they pull a young starter on an innings cap in the middle of the 5th, and they don’t qualify for the win (a terrible stat with terrible qualifying rules). But I like the proposed rule as a middle ground to incentivize teams to force their pitchers to attempt a third time through the order - that’s when the action happens.
The Brewers entered the eighth inning against the Red Sox today, leading 4-3, with reliever Matt Bush coming in to pitch the 8th. His work day, in order:
Home run
Home run
Double
Line drive out
Walk
They wound up giving up 9 runs, in total, in the 8th, and not surprisingly, lost the game. Ugggh.
Is that supposed to be the rationale? Discouraging the use of an opener?
If your starter doesn’t last 5 innings, it’s often because he’s having a sucky day and has already given up a lot of runs (or has gotten hurt), in which case, why penalize the team further by depriving them of the DH?
If your starter got shelled, you’re probably going to lose the game, and the DH isn’t going to be a factor. This rule is specifically trying to prevent pulling the starter before they have to go through the lineup a third time - either by using a starter, or just pulling them early.
I would agree with that; the question is whether Las Vegas Ballpark, as that city’s AAA stadium is unoriginally called, will meet MLB expectations in terms of facilities for players and press. Obviously, its 10,000 seat capacity isn’t really a problem, since
They sure as shit aren’t going to average 10,000 a game in Oakland now, and
They can make ticket prices pretty high.
Of course, they will not be able to play day games there for most of the year.
Positional difference is based on a list of numbers for different positions and then deducating the difference between them. The number for catcher is 240 and for a DH is zero, so a DH and a catcher will basically never be seen as being meaningfully similar. The difference between a second baseman and a center fielder is 60.
Yup; that news was actually from Thursday. My understanding is that the DFA starts a seven-day clock ticking, for the Giants to either trade him, or place him on irrevocable waivers; given how he’s been pitching, it seems unlikely that he’d get any interest for a trade, and that the latter is much more likely.