MLB Attendance: What’s Up With Baltimore and Pittsburgh?

As someone who would like to visit every MLB stadium in my lifetime, I tend to pay a lot of attention to MLB attendance. People should be going to games. It is, after all, the only sport that’s actually better in person than on television. And while I know that families, chummy couples, and college foursomes mostly visit the ballpark in the summertime, there’s no reason why stadiums should 30-to-40-percent full in April and May.

After looking at the numbers so far this year, two teams really surprised me: Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

I say that because if you look at any ranking of MLB ballparks, you’ll find Camden Yards and PNC Park among the Top 10. In fact, when fans voted on the best park in 2015, PNC Park came in at No. 1 and Camden was No. 7. It just doesn’t make sense; they both deliver great experiences and are legendary franchises. You would expect this from the Rays or Marlins but not the Ripkens or Clementes.

Embed from Getty Images

Compared to last year, PNC Park is down almost 10,000 fans per game (per game: 23,696 to 13,838). Baltimore? They’re down about 6,500 fans per game (per game: 25,042 to 18,408). With that said, Pirates’ fans have a minor excuse because the Penguins were in the playoffs, but their baseball team is over .500! There should be enough black-and-yellow to go around. Orioles’ fans, on the other hand, have nothing else going on around them sports-wise, and the team is giving away free tickets this year. Their reasoning could be the on-field product, but even crummy teams in baseball/football-only towns should draw fans. Kansas City, a city with a similar pro-sports portfolio, brought in over 27,000 fans per game last year and is outdrawing the O’s again this year.

On the bright side for Baltimore, at least they sold out their Opening Day game at Camden Yards. The Pirates, however, failed to do so for the first time since PNC Park opened. It was the O’s only sellout this year, with Pittsburgh not hitting the mark yet through 14 home games. Maybe it’s because McCutchen is gone?

Although it’s extremely warm on the East Coast already, both teams’ attendance will go up some at least a little bit when the summer hits. However, I’d bet everything that they fall short of previous seasons.

Baltimore is 8-26 this year; Pittsburgh is 19-16.

So those are the two cities — one from each league — that are bugging me the most, but what about the two leagues as a whole? Well, the National League is filling their stadiums at a much higher rate than the American League but they also sport the two worst-attended franchises in baseball — the aforementioned Pirates at No. 29 and, as expected, the Marlins at No. 30. On the flip side, they also have the two most-attended teams in baseball — San Francisco (No. 1) and St. Louis (No. 2). The Red Sox are filling up the seats better than any other American League team with an 88.9-percent average capacity.

Side note: everything is done by percent of capacity here. Ranking attendance by total fans is silly because some stadiums are much bigger than others, etc. The best judge of attendance is how much (or little) teams can fill their stadiums.

Here are the two leagues broken down by team:

Attendance Percent of Capacity: National League (67.1 percent); American League (58.1 percent).