Despite solid play on the field, the St. Louis Cardinals’ top four minor league clubs had down attendance in 2010.
After noting that the Batavia Muckdogs drew just 601 fans on Thursday night for what became their final game of the 2010 post-season and perhaps their last game ever, it reminded me that I wanted to look at minor league attendance for the season across the St. Louis Cardinals system.
Turns out that I didn’t have to do the data collection work, as the folks at Baseball Digest already have. They collected attendance figures for 176 teams across minor league baseball.
Below, I extracted the information for the Cardinals top six farm clubs and added some year-to-year and in-league comparisons. Here are my major observations:
- Despite all six clubs playing very good baseball, including five playoff entrants, only the lowest two rungs experienced an increase in attendance over 2009. Batavia and Johnson City’s increases are relatively small.
- They’re not alone, as 104 of the 176 minor league clubs averaged fewer fans per game in 2010 compared to last year.
- Palm Beach, Johnson City and Batavia remain within the bottom ten percent of the 176 teams tracked in average attendance.
- Of the Cardinals affiliates, only Memphis and Springfield are not deeply lodged among the poorest-attended teams in their respective leagues.
| 2010 # | 2009 # | Team | Lg | Total Att | G | 2010 avg | 2009 | +/- | 2010 Lg rank |
| 23 | 17 | Memphis Redbirds | PCL | 462,041 | 71 | 6,507 | 6,981 | -0.07 | 7 of 16 |
| 43 | 36 | Springfield Cardinals | TL | 357,336 | 67 | 5,333 | 5,835 | -0.09 | 4 of 8 |
| 86 | 85 | Quad Cities River Bandits | ML | 224,128 | 64 | 3,502 | 3,693 | -0.05 | 10 of 16 |
| 163 | 161 | Palm Beach Cardinals | FSL | 64,767 | 67 | 966 | 1,008 | -0.04 | 10 of 12 |
| 159t | 162 | Batavia Muckdogs | NYP | 36,601 | 36 | 1,016 | 962 | 0.06 | 14 of 14 |
| 173 | 172 | Johnson City Cardinals | AppL | 24,049 | 32 | 751 | 738 | 0.02 | 8 of 10 |
Update 9/15: Minor League Baseball announced overall attendance was down 1/2 of one percent this year, or -0.005 as represented on the above scale. In other words, the four Cardinals clubs’ declines of from four to nine percent were substantially greater than average.
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The economy? Seems like a rational explanation to me.
2B Skip Schumaker
RF Jon Jay
1B Albert Pujols
LF Matt Holliday
CF Colby Rasmus
C Yadier Molina
3B Pedro Feliz
P Kyle Lohse
SS Brendan Ryan
Reds lost.
At least we are running up the pitch count.
That’s something I guess. And Lohse hasn’t imploded yet.
Lohse isn’t supposed to implode until the 4th inning.
In all fairness to Lohse, that pitch to McCann wasn’t a bad pitch.
Lohse should be bowing before Colby right now.
Last season, I used to annoy RC by saying Colby should step out of a phone booth with a Cape on. He’s been looking like he’s working up to it, in the field and in the box.
Well, not that time in the box.
You think a 5 run lead is enough for Lohse?
Depends how long Tony leaves him in.
Short leash. Good move.
Nice job by Lohse.
He’s no ace, but we’ll take it.