MLB Attendance Declining

I've been an Orioles fan my entire life. Purchased the MLB.tv package since they started offering it. Couldn't pull the trigger this year, as I had zero hope for this team. I'd rather be doing just about anything else than watch that team for three, four hours every day.

 

Which team has the longest streak of not making the playoffs? Who are the no-hopers?

 

We're not even at the 4th of July and you could pretty much start the playoffs today. That's a problem.

 

Maybe MLB should relegate the worst teams. That seems to keep up interest in the EPL. There are at least 12 teams in the EPL that have no shot at winning ever,
or even finishing in the top 4 to make the Champions League. Don't live in England, but the complaining about it being unfair to compete with Man U,
Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal doesn't seem to be as loud as the small market complaining in MLB. In the EPL since 1995 the winner has been one of those
teams aside from the year Leicester won it.

 

There's occasional talk about Providence, but the Burnside Park site that's been talked about...no. That's the part of town where you can buy, uh, pharmaceutical goods cheap.

Soccer might be a plan to salvage McCoy Stadium if the PawSox get their new park (the finance package sits on the governor's desk, but Worcester is getting serious). After all the money that was pumped into McCoy two decades ago, we can't let that facility go to waste, no matter what happens with baseball.

 

This. I mean for $20, you can get a 12-pack of a conventional beer and stay at home.

 

Yankees game last week people sitting a few seats away got a tall can of Bud Lite for $16.20. Passed it down and asked if they were serious.

 

That idea gets mentioned often. Then people realize that, unlike in English football, the major-league teams own the minor-league players so if the Pirates go down and Oklahoma City goes up, when OKC faces the Dodgers it's playing against its parent team. (And I'm sure you know that, too, not being snarky).

 

Didn't realize it got mentioned often. Was thinking it was kind of a crazy idea. But it does seem like there is a lot of whining in MLB from the small
market teams. I know it isn't fair if a big market team spends 300 mil on payroll while a small market team spends 100 mil, but it also isn't fair that
the big market team charges fans $100 for a decent seat and $16 for a piss beer.

 

Not true for me. I have a large family, so the fact that I can get in the stadium for a reasonable amount is big. I've been at 2 Yankee games in the last 10 days (including the Stanton walk off). Tickets were less than 1/10 of what it would cost to go to a game at the Garden or MetLife. And in the new stadium, there really are no bad seats. And we see a great, exciting product. You can park for $20, or half the time get lucky on the street. Food and drinks are crazy expensive, but they let you bring in whatever you want. The whole process was a pleasure. I will admit that last year I had tickets for a game that got rained out so my kids kept me there for an old-time double header in which over the course of 8 hours the Yankees were swept by Cleveland and barely scored. That was less fun, so I understand that not every city has a similar experience.

 

Twenty-one of the 30 MLB teams have played in the World Series in the past 20 years. Only three teams (Washington, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh) have not been to at least an LCS in the span, and every team has made at least one playoff appearance. There hasn't been a repeat winner since the 1998-2000 Yankees. In fact, since the end of the Yankees dynasty in 2001 there have only been three teams that have made back-to-back appearances and one of them (the 2014-15 Royals) were a small-market team.
It might be harder for small market teams to win a championship -- they certainly need to do everything right, have less margin for error and a tighter window of opportunity -- but parity hardly seems to be a major issue for MLB when you look at the long-term results.
Teams have good years, bad years and absolutely shitty years in all sports. It's absurd to say the Royals or Orioles are unable to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox and need to be relegated when they were playing each other in the ALCS four years ago.

 

It's not a might. It IS harder for small market teams to win a championship.

Parity isn't the issue. It is the lack of an even playing field. More importantly, it is the lack of perception of an even playing field. The fans of smaller markets know the deck is stacked against their teams, which makes the losing even more frustrating.