Howdy from Raleigh,

The Phils finished their first playoff series last night with an electric W over the Miami Marlins, but the Phils aren’t the only ones in baseball with good news.

Major League Baseball is reporting a massive increase in attendance across the board in 2023.

This is a clear inflection point in the sport’s woes over the past 15 years.

A resurgence on the diamond.

A year ago I wrote an article titled ”America’s Pastime in Decline.”

My main point was that the decline in attendance from 78.5 million in 2008 down to 68.5 million in 2019 was a sign of poor health for baseball.

Well, as they say, “we’re back.”

Baseball had a monster year in terms of ticket sales growth, and they appear to be leaving the downward sloping graph behind.

MLB attendance is up +9.6% year-over-year with teams such as the Orioles (+42%), Reds (+46%), and Guardians (+42%) seeing the largest increases.

What’s driving the resurgence?

Well, there are three potential answers on this front - the pitch clock, COVID, and the World Baseball Classic.

Let’s start with the pitch clock. The MLB grew increasingly concerned that games were taking too long. As a result, they instituted a new rule. Pitchers must throw to the plate in 15 seconds if no one is on base, 20 seconds if someone is on base. Turns out, it worked. Game time is way down.

With the new rule in place, the average length of a game is down from 3 hours and 6 minutes to 2 hours and 42 minutes - in just a single year!

Why might this be important? Well, here’s what I had to say in my May 2022 piece on baseball’s decline: “Keeping people's attention has become increasingly harder due to the age of information abundance.”

By decreasing the pitch clock, baseball can do a better job of keeping people’s attention.

But, what about COVID?

There are also folks out there that say the pitch clock has nothing to do with it, namely Yahoo! Sports writer Kendall Baker.

Baker says that the league was destined for a rebound coming off of a lockout and pandemic regardless of the pitch clock.

Could there be another reason?

My take is that the World Baseball Classic primed the MLB for a great season. The global baseball event had lost steam in recent years, but 2023 was different.

Fans got across the world got to experience a playoff-like atmosphere in early March, just before the MLB’s opening day. This was a great primer for the upcoming season.

Plus, two of the game’s greatest players in Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout had the chance to square off to close out the tournament.

It was a storybook ending.

Here’s what I had to say about each player in May 2022, before they had their moment on the world stage:

“Angels center fielder Mike Trout is the talent of a generation and may go down statistically as an all-time great. His Q score, a measure of how notable an athlete is amongst the public, was just 22 - meaning that only 1 in 5 Americans know who he is. A Q score of 22 is the equivalent of a bench player on an NBA team.”

“Shohei Ohtani, the 2021 AL MVP, is the best pitcher/hitter combination in almost a century. Originally from Japan, Ohtani represents the game's best opportunity to grow internationally right now.”

Baseball combined a criminally undermarketed Trout and an international superstar in Ohtani and got the best close to an international game, ever.

The bottom line: all 3 variables - COVID, the pitch clock, and the World Baseball Classic - likely contributed to the massive year-over-year growth in MLB attendance. No matter the reason, it’s great for baseball.

What I’m paying attention to:

No place like Philadelphia in October

Thanks for reading

Go Phils.

Reply with salutations and a note on how your week is going,

Josh

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