Skip to main content

Is baseball in Florida dead?

Baseball in Florida has been struggling for a while. 

By now, it has become some weird chicken-and-egg game of (1) not having the revenue to hold onto expensive talent and (2) not having talent to bring in the attendance numbers they need.  

And what we don't know is how long this game will play out.  The Marlins attendance numbers are barely above what the Montreal Expos were bringing in and hey, we all know how well that worked out.

The problem hasn't always been talent.  Just recently, the Marlins had a core lineup of Dee Gordon, Christian Yelich, Giancarlo Stanton, and Marcell Ozuna.  In fact, over the years -- going way back to their two championship runs -- the Marlins have somehow found a way to accumulate talent.  But the attendance numbers just weren't there and we're left wondering why.

Some of it could be pricing.  The seats just may not be cheap enough to convince the fans to come to the ballpark.  But Miami is really no different than many other franchises, socioeconomically speaking.  The fans exist.
Some of it is systemic, as baseball attendance is down across the board.  There is not a lot that can be done about this trend, although we're going to find out if 2019 -- the year of the superstar -- can buck the disappointing attendance trend.  

Some of it may be culture.  

In fact, most of it may be culture.

We're planning on doing a deeper dive across franchises and sports, but our goal is to do a statistical analysis examining the relationship between a team's culture (which could include such objective measures as payroll) and its attendance.  

The theory I will posit here, and leave until we have the time to perform the full statistical analysis is this: the Marlins do not have a winning culture and doing so creates years.  There is genuine mistrust between fans and ownership (yes, despite the change in ownership).  Having spent some of my formative years in Florida, I am painfully aware of what it was like to watch the Marlins.  They'd build an incredible team, win the whole stinking thing, and watch the team be demolished immediately following their victory parade.  

A fan base can tolerate many things.  Losing seasons.  Tough injuries.  And mediocre coaching.  But a fan base is smart enough to figure out when it's being sold, on purpose, an inferior product.  The Marlins, for years, have attempted to cut costs in hopes of a profit, only to find out that it may never be able to regain its form enough to build a successful team.

Alas, there is no reason to think baseball in Florida is altogether dead.  Spring training is wildly successful and Florida's local economy benefits significantly from the games.  But baseball in Miami may very well be on life support.

Popular posts from this blog

Fantasy Baseball: A few weeks in, how do we adjust and adapt?

We are several weeks into the season and, at this point, we can all agree that everything we knew going into the season was thrown out the window as soon as the games started.  That said, there is still a lot of baseball yet to play and for us, as fantasy nerds, a lot of in-season management to navigate.  As we move forward into summer, here are a few things I either have done or am thinking about doing. Use your FAAB to get the young pitchers and sell them, almost immediately, for impact bats. Put this one in the category of "shiny new toy."  Sure, I have preyed on our inattentiveness, but in re-draft settings, I see no issue with snagging these higher-end rookie pitchers and then flipping them.  In two different settings, I was able to flip Bibee for Miguel Vargas and then, separately, Mason Miller for Jordan Walker. Will these trades work out for me?  Probably not, but I have a lot more faith in Vargas and Walker, particularly, than I do in Bibee and Miller....

The More Good Days than Bad Days Principle

There are seven days in a week, about 30 days in a month, and 365 days in a year.   Not all of those can be good days.  No one has 7 perfectly good days.  Likewise, I've never gone through an entire year without a single bad day.   I have two reactions to that: The first reaction is the whole "control what you can control" thing.  You can control your effort and your attitude.  And that's absolutely true.  But sometimes a day is so bad that no amount of effort or attitude will fix it. The second reaction is that, in any given week, if you have 4 good days and 3 bad days, you're still winning.  Even if you have a few "meh" days, but the good ones are still outnumbering the rough ones, I think we're in a good place. The same goes for our practices with our little leaguers.  We've had some truly rough and awful practices.  The coach's didn't show up with patience, the kids didn't show up with their attention spans, a...

Fantasy Baseball: Mock Draft Reactions

It's December and, for the diehards, it's officially draft season for fantasy baseball.  Frankly, it's fair to ask whether the fantasy baseball season ever really ended.  While it's true that many of us began tending to our wounds in October, diagnosing the hits and the misses, a few of us never really stopped thinking, obsessively, about fantasy baseball.  For me, personally, I have been trying to stay permanently in "draft-season" meaning I want to be in some form of a draft between now and the end of March.  Recently, I was fortunate enough to join several industry experts, including Scott White, Frank Stampfl, and Chris Towers in a 12-team head-to-head points mock draft .  In this article, I will cover a few high-level observations (heck, even a few things that surprised me) and the lessons I learned. Lesson #1 :  Aaron Judge was not universally considered a first overall pick and that surprised me. This one surprised me.  As soon as I drafted Jud...