In 2014, Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost complained about fans failing to support his team. It was late August, and the Royals were on the verge of making the playoffs for the first time since 1985. “I mean, what, 13,000 people got to see a great game?” he said. “We’ve been working on trying to build this team for the last three or four years to put ourselves in a position where we can contend for a championship. … It’s really, really important we have our fans behind us at the stadium.”
The Royals hired Yost in 2010, and they won 70 or fewer games in his first three seasons. But they won 86 games in 2013. A year later, they won 89 and took the dynastic San Francisco Giants to seven games in the World Series. They won it all a year later. Yost, who retired in 2019, was right that the Royals were building something. However, he was wrong about the fans.
I thought about Yost’s quote when Minnesota Twins president and CEO Dave St. Peter offered some consternation about attendance at Target Field this season. “I’m surprised and kind of bordering on disappointed that we haven’t drawn better the second half of the season,” St. Peter said. “The way we played coming out of the gate, we got off to a good start, and I fully expected our attendance to jump more than it did. It did jump, but it didn’t jump to the level that I had hoped, which would have been back to pre-pandemic, maybe 2019.”
The Twins averaged about 30,116 fans per game in 2019, and that dropped to 22,236 this season. Some that that was related to factors the team could not control. The lockout caused ticket sales to drop because fans didn’t know if or when the season would start. Inflation also shrunk many people’s expendable income for entertainment. And a “narrative around public safety” in the Twin Cities, as St. Peter called it, made some people wary of going downtown.
Still, it’s understandable why St. Peter, or anyone who works for the Twins, would have expected attendance to be better. They signed Carlos Correa, one of the best shortstops in baseball. Royce Lewis is one of many promising prospects who made their debut this season. Minnesota led the AL Central for most of the season and was in a three-way race for part of it. St. Peter also took accountability, saying the Twins are looking at everything from how they are marketing the team to ticket pricing and reaching out to different communities to get fans to come to the game.
St. Peter’s borderline disappointment in attendance is more nuanced than Yost’s criticism in 2014. But it’s worth looking at why Yost was wrong, using the extreme to illustrate the example. First and foremost, fans are the reason for spectator sports. They have no responsibility to show up. They are the customer, and the customer is always right. But secondly, attendance is often misunderstood. Given the scale of baseball parks – Target Field can hold nearly 40,000 people – attendance is usually related to three factors.
- A large percentage of tickets sold are season tickets. Fans buy them in the offseason, and the amount sold is typically as related to how the team did the year before as it is what it’s expected to do. A team’s recent history matters as much as its current success, and the Twins have had moderate success in the Falvey-Levine era.
- Most tickets are bought in advance. Weekend games do better than Tuesday night games because it’s usually more convenient for fans to watch a Friday night game than one on Tuesday when they have to get up for work in the morning. An individual player hardly moves the needle on a particular night. Johan Santana might. But Joe Ryan or Tyler Mahle probably won’t.
- Families often build their plans around their children’s schedules. That’s why there are more day games in the summer and more night games when fall rolls around. The Twins wisely moved many games to 6:40 pm CT, knowing that baseball games often last three-and-a-half hours. Fortunately, MLB is working to shorten games, which could help attendance across the league next year.
In 2014, Yost was upset that 13,000 people showed up to a Tuesday night game against the Twins. In case you need a reminder, Minnesota won 70 games that year – an improvement from the three 60-win seasons that proceeded it. It was hardly a marquee game.
The Twins need to do two things to get fans to come to the ballpark. They need to convince fans that they’re likely to win the game they bought tickets to and that they’re going somewhere as a franchise. Will they win a playoff game for the first time since 2004? And are they building a contender?
The Twins won 46 of their home games this year, meaning a fan who attends a game at Target Field had a 56.8% chance of seeing a win. Beyond that, this year’s team gave fans a sense of déja vù. They led the AL Central for most of the year, but it was a lousy division. They didn’t have the dynamic personalities of the Bomba Squad, and Rocco Baldelli looked like he was taking orders from the front office. Byron Buxton was hurt, and Correa didn’t have many signature moments.
Even before their collapse, the Twins looked like a team that would win a lousy division and lose in the playoffs again. Until they have more homegrown pitching, they’re not going to be able to compete with the best teams in the AL. And they will suffer the same fate in the playoffs until they can compete with the New York Yankees, Houston Astros, and the best teams in the junior circuit.
The Twins have other options to garner fan interest, of course.
They could have fired Baldelli to appease the portion of the fanbase that has turned on him. But you can’t blame him for Minnesota’s rash of injuries, and another manager will have the same relationship with the front office.
The Twins could ditch analytics and let their starters face the order for a third time. But guys like Chris Archer and Dylan Bundy will get hit around, resulting in more losses than wins. They could also let Ryan throw 130-plus pitches when he’s rolling against the Royals. But it seems foolish to risk his career and a meaningful late-season start to chase a no-hitter against a 65-win team. The Twins have to look at the long-term picture, even if fans (rightfully) are invested in what they see in the moment.
The front office could have also cleaned house on the coaching staff. But if they believe that injuries are the issue, it makes more sense to change the training staff. A clueless front office looks to deflect blame and appease angry fans. A front office with direction sticks with its convictions until ownership fires them.
“The health side of it is a big part of it,” Derek Falvey said. “But this whole group, we feel like, is the right group to help lead us in the direction we need to go.”
The Twins may have led the Central for most of the year. They signed an exciting shortstop and called up multiple top prospects. They were fun at times. But ultimately, the skeptical fans were right. This team fell apart. And even though injuries were a significant factor, it was hard to believe that they would be able to beat the Yankees or Astros in the playoffs – even at full strength. The customer was ultimately right about this team. They always are.
