Oakland is officially on the clock.
The Athletics announced last week that they have started to ponder their relocation options. A long-discussed stadium project in downtown Oakland has failed to advance beyond the blueprint stage, so Major League Baseball ordered the team to turn up the pressure.
“Oakland is a great baseball town,” said A’s owner John Fisher, “and we will continue to pursue our waterfront ballpark project. We will also follow MLB's direction to explore other markets.”
Any discussion of possible homes for the Athletics can wait for another day. But I can’t let the first part of Fisher’s statement pass.
Oakland has never been a great baseball town, not even when the A’s first arrived from Kansas City in 1968.
The team — the famous Swingin’ A’s — won three consecutive World Series from 1972 to 1974, drawing 2.77 million fans to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
Ah, you say, that’s not a bad total for a season. Here’s the problem: It was a total for all three seasons. Oakland’s world champs peaked with their pitiful 1973 attendance of 1,000,763.
The same problem continues today. Attendance, to be sure, isn’t everything. The quality of a team’s stadium, the size of its market, and the healthiness of its TV ratings also have an impact on the bottom line.
But attendance does indicate a team’s local relevance and popularity — and it’s there that the A’s fall short.
I collected each club’s attendance figures for the 15 seasons from 2005 (the first year the current crop of 30 franchises took the field) through 2019 (the last normal pre-Covid year). Then I divided those teams into five logical groups, based on their annual averages.
If you’re looking specifically for Oakland, you might want to start at the end.
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Excellent support
1. Los Angeles Dodgers (3,674,986 per year)
2. New York Yankees (3,631,357 per year)
3. St. Louis Cardinals (3,409,322 per year)
4. San Francisco Giants (3,180,610 per year)
5. Los Angeles Angels (3,162,687 per year)
6. Chicago Cubs (3,058,064 per year)
Most members of this elite group share two important characteristics: They’re based in gigantic cities, and they win a majority of their games.
America’s three largest metropolitan areas are home to four of these fortunate clubs: New York (Yankees), Los Angeles (Dodgers and Angels), and Chicago (Cubs). The Giants aren’t far off the pace, given that San Francisco is the nation’s sixth-biggest market. The sole exception to the size rule is the Cardinals in No. 23 St. Louis.
But the Cards are blessed with an equally important quality: They win. Only four clubs won more than 1,300 regular-season games during the 2005-2019 span. St. Louis was one of them, as were the Dodgers and Yankees.
Five of the six teams in this category won more than half of their games over the 15-year period. The Giants were the exception with a 1,203-1,226 mark, but they did manage to secure three world championships over that stretch, which is certainly good enough.
Very good support
7. Boston Red Sox (2,957,196 per year)
8. Philadelphia Phillies (2,833,057 per year)
9. New York Mets (2,746,743 per year)
10. Milwaukee Brewers (2,719,239 per year)
11. Colorado Rockies (2,644,802 per year)
12. Detroit Tigers (2,564,609 per year)
13. Texas Rangers (2,541,938 per year)
You could make a case that the Red Sox belong on the list of teams enjoying excellent support, since they fell only slightly short of the 3 million threshold. The only thing that kept them out of that exalted group was the relatively small size of Fenway Park.
Yet the Red Sox have the consolation of topping this list of seven clubs that enjoy very good backing from their fans. Most of these teams won more often than they lost between 2005 and 2019, led by Boston, the fourth and final club to exceed 1,300 victories. The Rockies and Tigers were the only sub-.500 clubs.
Population is still of critical importance. The Red Sox, Phillies, Mets, and Rangers are based in top-10 markets, while the Rockies and Tigers are among the top 17. That leaves the Brewers as the only exception. They’re 10th in 15-year attendance, even though Milwaukee ranks just 35th in market size.
Average support
14. Atlanta Braves (2,444,522 per year)
15. Houston Astros (2,417,349 per year)
16. Minnesota Twins (2,381,894 per year)
17. San Diego Padres (2,329,462 per year)
18. Washington Nationals (2,316,919 per year)
19. Toronto Blue Jays (2,316,360 per year)
The heading here is slightly misleading. The typical big-league club drew 2.46 million fans per season between 2005 and 2019, which means that these six teams are actually ever-so-slightly below the norm.
Yet they’re comfortably removed from both ends of these rankings, and they sit within 150,000 fans of the overall average. They’re better than some clubs, worse than others — middle of the pack, if you will.
Four of these six teams posted losing records over the 15-year period. Only the Braves and Nationals exceeded .500.
Those two clubs are also based in top-10 markets, as are the Astros. (The same could also be said of the Blue Jays, except for a technicality. Toronto is certainly big enough, but Canadian metros are excluded from the list of U.S. television markets.)
That leaves the Twins and Padres, who both draw from smaller fan bases and failed to reach 1,200 regular-season victories in the 2005-2019 span. Yet their support remains around baseball’s midpoint.
Below average support
20. Seattle Mariners (2,174,759 per year)
21. Arizona Diamondbacks (2,152,824 per year)
22. Cincinnati Reds (2,074,794 per year)
23. Chicago White Sox (2,049,353 per year)
24. Baltimore Orioles (2,037,777 per year)
There was a time when it was an exceptional accomplishment to draw 2 million fans. Only two clubs — the Mets and Dodgers — reached that mark in 1971, half a century ago.
Now it’s commonplace. Eighteen clubs topped 2 million in the attendance derby in 2019, the most recent season without Covid restrictions.
That’s why the teams in this group have cause for concern. Yes, they topped 2 million in the 15-year tabulations, yet they all fell at least 290,000 below the typical big-league seasonal attendance in the 2005-2019 span. Their annual averages might have been impressive in the distant past, but that’s no longer true.
All five of these clubs struggled on the field, losing a majority of their games over the study period. And most are stuck in smaller markets. The White Sox are the exception, based in America’s third-biggest metro, yet they’re still at a disadvantage. The Cubs are the dominant team in Chicago, putting the Sox firmly in the shadows.
None of the other four clubs is located in a top-10 market. Baltimore and Cincinnati have the smallest fan bases, sitting 26th and 37th in the population standings.
Poor support
25. Pittsburgh Pirates (1,905,602 per year)
26. Kansas City Royals (1,810,385 per year)
27. Cleveland Indians (1,784,275 per year)
28. Oakland Athletics (1,698,567 per year)
29. Miami Marlins (1,496,001 per year)
30. Tampa Bay Rays (1,443,756 per year)
These are the six teams to worry about, the only ones that drew fewer than 2 million fans per season between 2005 and 2019.
The Indians and Athletics actually posted positive records over the 15-year period — Cleveland with a .522 winning percentage, Oakland at .513. Five of the six clubs made at least two playoff appearances during that timeframe, led by the Athletics with six and the Indians and Rays with five. The Royals even won the World Series in 2015. Only the Marlins failed to make the playoffs at all.
Yet none of these clubs has been able to sustain a strong level of fan support in recent years.
They collectively topped the 2 million threshold just 15 times in the study period. The Pirates did it five times (most recently in 2016), followed by four for the Indians (2017), three for the Royals (2017), two for the Athletics (2014), and one for the Marlins (2012). The Rays didn’t do better than 1,874,962 in 2009.
Oakland is currently under the microscope, but baseball’s problems won’t be solved if the A’s get either a new stadium in Northern California or a new home somewhere else. There are five other teams that also deserve attention, as you can see above.
Their time on the hot seat could be coming.