Analytics and the decline of Baseball's popularity?

I think it's true in all sports; a significant number of teams go into each season making no pretense of trying to win.

 

The first half is not true and the second half exhibits a fundamental understanding of the relationship between batting average and OBP.

 

Yep, my bad. The list I read ended in 2017. The key graph from the story you linked: "April’s schedule included a record 28 postponements and 102 games played in temperatures under 50 degrees. The season ended with 54 postponements – the most since 1989 – with 26 on weekends, when teams typically draw their highest numbers."

The point remains. If one time in 15 years attendance drops below 70 million — which was likely caused by record foul weather — are we really going act as if baseball's popularity is "on the decline?" If you look at ballpark attendance on a graph, it's basically been a straight line for 20 years.

 

The Cardinals, for one, are a metronome of attendance with 3.3 million to 3.5 million a season. I think only the Dodgers and Yankees draw more.

 

"April’s schedule included a record 28 postponements and 102 games played in temperatures under 50 degrees. The season ended with 54 postponements – the most since 1989 – with 26 on weekends, when teams typically draw their highest numbers."

Also, attendance didn't drop for six straight years. After a slight uptick in 2015, it declined three years in a row, only slightly (less than 1 percent) in 2016 and 2017.

 

The main thing is that the reason probably isn’t a way that baseball was different when you were a kid and you miss that part.

 

Certainly BA has been deemphasized in favor of OBP and in succession, OPS. BA is a component factor of OBP.

Back in the Sixties/Seventies, little attention was paid to walk rates. If you hit .300, it was a really big deal.

 

Teams don't want a schedule that isn't balanced throughout the season. Summer dates are the best attended so the warm weather teams would be shafted by playing more home games in April. You also have limits on length of road trips, which would probably mean weird lengths of home stands and more travel.

 

People talk about OBP because it is a better indicator of offensive value. People don't deemphasize hitting for average. It is just now part of a bigger picture.

 

Why hasn't the NBA's popularity been ruined by analytics?

 

I don’t know, but to me the NBA has never been about stats to the fans the way baseball has. The NBA is about hero worship, MLB is about fans feeling smart. Finding out everything they knew about baseball was wrong hurt a lot.