Passan: Tanking Killing Baseball?

[emmett16]

Baseball attendance is down due to a decade of terrible branding.  It’s finally catching up.  Their focus has been villainizing it’s stars for PEDs, trying to speed up a game, and other non-important factors to children.   NBA swooped in, branded abroad, marketed their star players, and made big deals out of important dates/games (Christmas rematch of championship etc.). Baseball is and old white mans game and other demographics are dropping out in huge numbers (both playing and watching).  This is not something that happened this year, it’s been an ongoing trend for over a decade.  MLB needs new leadership with a clear vision to build interest in the future fans of the game (children) before there are none.  

[DrungoHazewood]

15 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

Baseball attendance is down due to a decade of terrible branding.  It’s finally catching up.  Their focus has been villainizing it’s stars for PEDs, trying to speed up a game, and other non-important factors to children.   NBA swooped in, branded abroad, marketed their star players, and made big deals out of important dates/games (Christmas rematch of championship etc.). Baseball is and old white mans game and other demographics are dropping out in huge numbers (both playing and watching).  This is not something that happened this year, it’s been an ongoing trend for over a decade.  MLB needs new leadership with a clear vision to build interest in the future fans of the game (children) before there are none.  

Yes, the way to get younger fans in the seats and watching at home is to ensure the march toward a five-hour average game continues unabated.  I know the thing that draws my kids into a game is knowing that their bedtime is somewhere around the 5th inning.

If the rate of increase in game length continues until the year 2400 you can just live at the park, since yesterday's game will end about the time today's starts.

[mrbig1]

What kills me is that seeing people in Maryland wearing Nats hats and jersey.

[Legend_Of_Joey]

13 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Lesson for me was that you sometimes pay the unscrupulous guy to protect your stuff from other unscrupulous guys. 

Welcome to Lot B/C at Camden, especially if you gotta park under bridge near Lot A. 

[TommyPickles]

Man, there’s a lot of doom and gloom in this thread.

Im not saying MLB is perfect, but let’s be clear, the sport of baseball is doing pretty well World wide.

The 2017 WBC had huge crowds and ratings. (Their biggest yet)

Women’s baseball is on the rise.  You should check out some of the articles about the Trailblazer Series that just went down.

More and more adult rec leagues are popping up for baseball and softball in fast growing cities.

And on a more anecdotal note, I work at an inner city high school and we’re launching the school’s first baseball team this year. The kids are pumped.

I haven’t been to an Os game yet this year, you know, because it’s cold. I’ll probably hit 8-10 before the season ends though. Go Os!

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, TommyPickles said:

Man, there’s a lot of doom and gloom in this thread.

Im not saying MLB is perfect, but let’s be clear, the sport of baseball is doing pretty well World wide.

The 2017 WBC had huge crowds and ratings. (Their biggest yet)

Women’s baseball is on the rise.  You should check out some of the articles about the Trailblazer Series that just went down.

More and more adult rec leagues are popping up for baseball and softball in fast growing cities.

And on a more anecdotal note, I work at an inner city high school and we’re launching the school’s first baseball team this year. The kids are pumped.

I haven’t been to an Os game yet this year, you know, because it’s cold. I’ll probably hit 8-10 before the season ends though. Go Os!

I highly doubt women's baseball is going to do anything to save baseball. I don't think the game of baseball is dying, but I do think it's got a demographics issue. Baseball is unlike any other professional league because it's played almost every day from spring to fall. I think accessibility to game, videos and stats are what will help this sport. Finding ways to quicken the game is a good thing as well though they can't take away the strategy.

Glad to hear about an inner city school starting a program up. That's a good thing. A strong push towards trying to get inner city kids interested in the game is long overdue, though I know the Orioles have supported RBI for a long time.

[emmett16]

You, just like MLB, are missing the point.  MLB has no visibility and is inaccessible to  the youth.  Kids flat out don’t care about the game because it is not being put in front of them.  You are concerned about a 5 hour game in 2400 when you should be concerned if MLB will be around in 2400.  If no one watches the game what difference does it make if the game is 2hr or 5hr?  

[Aristotelian]

I think not tanking is killing the Orioles long term.

[Luke-OH]

2 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I think not tanking is killing the Orioles long term.

I think the Orioles may have missed their chance to rebuild without tanking. To be clear, this isn't about early season results, I was advocating a partial sell and rebuild all offseason.

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, Luke-OH said:

I think the Orioles may have missed their chance to rebuild without tanking. To be clear, this isn't about early season results, I was advocating a partial sell and rebuild all offseason.

I think they missed out on a good chance when instead of getting three extra first round picks they brought Davis back, had Wieters accept the QO and gave up a pick for Gallardo.  All of a sudden four first round picks became one. 

[Luke-OH]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

I think they missed out on a good chance when instead of getting three extra first round picks they brought Davis back, had Wieters accept the QO and gave up a pick for Gallardo.  All of a sudden four first round picks became one. 

Yeah, that hurt, you have a great posting history of being against those moves. I generally don't harp on that because I could be accused of just using hindsight since I don't have any proof that I was against those moves at the time, even though I was.

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Luke-OH said:

Yeah, that hurt, you have a great posting history of being against those moves. I generally don't harp on that because I could be accused of just using hindsight since I don't have any proof that I was against those moves at the time, even though I was.

The Wieters thing was bad luck and him coming back for a year didn't do any damage.  Not many folks thought a Boras client would accept the QO.  I still think it was a decent risk to attempt at the time.  These days I'm more hesitant about offering a QO.

[Luke-OH]

10 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

The Wieters thing was bad luck and him coming back for a year didn't do any damage.  Not many folks thought a Boras client would accept the QO.  I still think it was a decent risk to attempt at the time.  These days I'm more hesitant about offering a QO.

If I remember correctly, I was all about Caleb Joseph at the time, like way too much.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Luke-OH said:

If I remember correctly, I was all about Caleb Joseph at the time, like way too much.

It can be very hard to ignore a good story.  Just ask Joe Jordan.

[DrungoHazewood]

3 hours ago, TommyPickles said:

I'm not saying MLB is perfect, but let’s be clear, the sport of baseball is doing pretty well World wide.

The 2017 WBC had huge crowds and ratings. (Their biggest yet)

International baseball is doing okay, but it'll always be hamstrung by not having any top-tier leagues outside of Major League Baseball.  It's hard to get people excited about a sport when the best players and teams are thousands of miles away.  The WBC has hopefully established a little niche, but Americans don't take it seriously, and they have trouble finding competitive teams beyond the core of US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Netherlands, Cuba, Venezuela, DR, Puerto Rico, Panama... 

I think baseball is almost on par with cricket internationally.  Limited number of places it's played, and does reasonably well in that context.  But absolutely dwarfed by soccer, where even tiny countries have multi-level pyramids of professional and semi-professional teams that compete both in national leagues and international competitions.