The Guardians have played the A’s 7 times already this year. We opened the season in Oakland to 4000 fans. I think the A’s have the worst defense in the AL. They won’t have a home for 3 years after this season and everybody knows. Their team is basically nothing.
But even the A’s are playing better than the Sox! Good lord!
I blame Tim Anderson.
The A’s have had 13 home games so far, and are averaging 6,244 attendees. I can’t even imagine the atmosphere at a game.
Many may actually be there to see the OTHER team if that team is a good one or one that has notable stars.
Wow. That’s incredible. I have a lot of memories of going to late 80s White Sox games at the old Comiskey when the stadium felt empty, and looking at the official numbers, that was still averaging around 13K a game. And even there, it felt way overcounted (I don’t know if they used paid attendance numbers or an actual count–I’m guessing the former) I can’t even imagine what it would be like at half that. If paid attendance is 6K at those A’s games, the actual amount of spectators, I suspect, is much lower.
I dunno - A’s fans are pretty cool and loyal. They don’t come out in droves to fill up their nasty ass stadium (63k seats is a lot of seats) but the ones that do come are loud and proud. At any game at any park you’ll find people there to see the other team but I doubt even for the A’s it’s a significant number. I’d wager to guess that the majority of the meager crowd is there just because they love A’s baseball.
I really, really feel sorry for the people of Oakland losing their team. Especially in this slow death way.
I agree. It isn’t right but, if the A’s ownership has that little regard for its fans, then the fans can become Giant fans when they leave. Loyalty should be earned, not blindly given.
For many years, certainly during the seventies, the National League used to count people-in-the-seats while the American League counted tickets sold. I’m not sure whether this was still the case for the NL in the late 80s, but it seems very probable that in the games you’re talking about 13k represented 13k tickets sold–so, likely fewer than that in the stands.
Last September, at the end of a lost season for the New York Mets, I paid the princely sum of $1.79 for a ticket to a Marlins-Mets doubleheader at Citi Field (secondary market of course); fees pushed the price to a whopping seven and a half bucks. Naturally, transportation added significantly to the total cost…
Anyway, the official attendance for the DH was 24,966, which may have been the total number of tickets sold but was off by two orders of magnitude if we’re looking at fannies in the seats. I doubt there were 500 fans in the stands when the first game began, and if there were more than 3,000 by the time it “filled up” I’d be shocked.
The atmosphere was…about what you’d expect. It didn’t help that Mets fans were outnumbered by, or at least outcheered by, Marlins fans–probably the only time I’ve experienced this at a major league game. Based on that, I have no trouble believing that “fans of the other team” may equal or even outnumber A’s fans at Oakland’s home games these days.
I attend a bunch of minor league games in a 5,000-seat stadium near where I live, and 3,000 fans in a 5,000-seat stadium can make for an excellent atmosphere–loud, bouncy, upbeat, and enthusiastic–but 3,000 fans in a 40,000-seat stadium just can’t.
The Sox’ team batting average is now at an abysmal .188. The pitching isn’t much better: team ERA is 4.96 (third-worst in MLB), and four of their five starters have an ERA of 5.61 or higher.
The White Sox should dub this season “Springtime For Hitler”.
Must be intentional.
You would think so, but typically teams tank for draft picks in seasons in which they can actually get a high draft pick…
Also, TIL that MLB has instituted a draft lottery. Somehow I completely missed that development.
The White Sox have been shut out 8 times in 22 games. To put this in perspective, the average MLB team will get shut out 10 times over the course of an entire season.
Every year a team starts off horribly, and I am hopeful we will see a new standard of futility, and they’ll go 34-128 or something else magnificent. Last year the A’s were promisingly awful. But they always disappoint me and play better. The problem with my dream is that there’s always slightly better players handy in the minors or off the waiver wire who can marginally improve the club. Also, in this case, Andrew Benintendi can’t keep being that bad.
The White Sox, though? I have high (low) hopes. Man, they are bad. On Baseball Reference they list nine players as the primary starting nine based on playing time; of those nine men, seven still have not hit a home run this year. They bat .190 as a team, obviously the worst in baseball, but make up for it by also being the worst at hitting home runs. Also, they are very slow on the bases. Just to add extra humor, the pitching is horrific.
The White Sox have been outscored more than two and a half to one. No team in modern baseball history has been outscored 2-to-1 in a season.
In addition to being horrible, they also have an owner who I think is trying to destroy the team to effect a move, likely to Nashville.
I don’t understand how this part works. I’d think a better team would be easier to move. Is it because the team would be too expensive if they were good? I’d think Nashville would jump at the opportunity to build a stadium for the Braves right now.
A bad team generally doesn’t draw fans. Then the owner can say his team wasn’t being supported by the city, and he will move the team to somewhere where it will be supported.
ETA: Even though the Cubs were terrible for years and years, they still drew a lot of fans. But even when the A’s were competitive, they couldn’t consistently sell a lot of tickets.
The ‘receiving’ city doesn’t really care if the team is good or bad…they just want a major-league franchise.
It provides an excuse to move.
It’s what Oakland did. Fisher absolutely, positively sabotaged his own team.
So, in this vein of discussion and, if the team did move, could we prevent him from taking the name “White Sox” with him? I’d love a “new” White Sox team with an actually good owner. In which case I could easily say good riddance to the present owner.
I don’t think MLB plans any expansion right now, but I don’t really think Chicago could force them to give up the name.
As a lifelong Sox fan, the part about this that galls me the most is that Jerry Reinsdorf loves to tell stories about growing up as a Dodger fan and how devastated he was when they moved to LA. It was a formative memory for him and one of the reasons he wanted to buy the White Sox and own a baseball team. The fact that he would consider moving the team and doing the same thing to all of the White Sox fans that happened to him as a child speaks very poorly of his character. (As far as I know the threats to move are all rumors extrapolated from him visiting Nashville and speaking to the Mayor and his previous threats to move the team to Tampa Bay when the current ballpark was under discussion, not anything he’s directly said)
You won’t get one. Once the White Sox are gone, Chicago will have the same number of teams it has in the NFL, NHL, and NBA–one. How much talk have you heard about any of those leagues putting an expansion, or relocated, team in Chicago? None.
The day after they’re gone, the White Sox will be as forgotten as the Chicago Cardinals, and there will be equally little demand, in a Cub-obsessed city, for a replacement.
Definitely. That was the fatal flaw in Leonard Tose’s scheme to move the Eagles way back when. The Eagles had, and have, a huge, rabid, devoted fan base, through winning seasons and horrific stretches. It kind of sabotaged his evil plans.