NEW YORK _ That the Yankees arrived in May five games over .500 despite their epic spate of injuries could, on the surface, be viewed as one of the phenomenal feats of this early baseball season _ except for the fact it served to further open our eyes to the troublesome big picture about the game: The overall quality of play.
In a nutshell, there are only a few really good teams in baseball, a whole lot of mediocre teams, and way too many bad to awful teams that have no chance of making the postseason. The Commissioner's office, as they always do, will attribute this to the April weather. But the attendance figures for the first month of the season _ especially in places like Toronto, Miami and Tampa where there are domes, and San Francisco, where the weather is almost always pleasant _ bode ominously for a bigger overall decrease than last year when attendance was down 4 percent, with 17 of 30 teams experiencing declines and overall attendance falling under 70 million for the first time in 15 years.
Just some of the alarming early attendance stories: The Blue Jays, who, because of their pitching are playing much better baseball than anyone would have thought for a team that is otherwise semi-tanking, are down a whopping 33 percent. The Giants, who have drawn over 3 million fans in 18 of the last 20 seasons, are down 17 percent after doing virtually nothing over the winter to improve an old, bad team. The Rays, despite fashioning the best record in baseball for most of April, are routinely playing to three-quarters empty houses, while the perpetually tanking awful Marlins, amid the "Where have you gone Christian Yelich? Where have you gone J.T. Realmuto?" fans' laments to Derek Jeter, are once again well on their way to drawing fewer than a million fans.
Until they ran into a legitimate starting pitcher in Arizona's Zack Greinke, the Yankees, with their Triple A-laden lineup, had stormed through a 6-1 West Coast road trip against the hapless Angels and Giants to finish out April a rather amazing 17-11. That was against two teams that aren't tanking but merely bad. Presently, you have six teams _ Orioles, Marlins, Royals, Tigers, Reds and White Sox _ that are either tanking or slowly coming out of tanking _ and three others _ Angels, Giants and Rangers _ who likewise have no chance of making the postseason. Then you have the mediocrity group _ the A's, Pirates, Blue Jays, Diamondbacks and Brewers _ who, without major upgrades at the trading deadline, are sufficiently flawed to have realistic expectations of postseason baseball. That's more than a third of baseball with bad to mediocre teams, and we're not counting the Indians, who are now down two starting pitchers, Corey Kluber and Mike Clevinger, for at least a couple of months. Or the Rockies, who seem to really miss DJ LeMahieu and have so far greatly underperformed (15th in the majors in runs, 19th in OPS, 17th in starting pitchers ERA).
Add to that, the analytics equation _ lift angles, shifts, pitch counts, multiple relievers etc., _ that has served to suck all the action out of the game, and it is understandable why more and more fans appear to be turning off to baseball. Home runs, strikeouts, walks and hit by pitches continue to go up. Last year was the first time in history there were more strikeouts than hits in baseball. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, baseball is already on pace to surpass last year's record strikeouts, homers and hit-by-pitch totals.
Yet, in a discussion with the Associated Press Sports Editors organization in New York this week, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred continued talk about the possibility of expansion to 32 teams in the near future. Hel-looo? Look around at all these bad teams, Mr. Commissioner! There are already at least 50-100 Triple A-caliber players masquerading as major leaguers, and with the analytics-driven emasculation of starting pitchers, just about every team in baseball is experiencing a gross shortage of quality pitching. Almost every day now, 1-2 teams are adopting the Tampa Rays' "Opener" scheme to get them through games. The last thing baseball needs to do is expand. It's only too bad they can't contract a couple of teams.
A friend of mine who coached youth baseball with me back in the '80s had an even darker explanation for what's happening to baseball: "When we were kids, we played Little League and Babe Ruth, collected baseball cards and went to a couple dozen games a year, either with our parents or on our own," he said. "Nowadays, kids aren't playing baseball anymore. They're playing lacrosse and soccer. Little League is drying up, being replaced by travel teams for only the few elite players in each town. Kids aren't collecting baseball cards the way they used to and have no vested interest in today's players like we did. Finally, the prices for a decent seat at a major league game have become ridiculous."
While that's just one person's opinion, between the multitude of bad teams, tanking or otherwise, and the effects all the analytics are having on the action in the game, there is more than sufficient evidence that the attendance decline last year and continuing this year is not an anomaly but rather a matter of grave concern.
