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MLB 2016 Regular Season Official Thread - Do Not Attempt to Ketchup

B

bonesmccoy

Banned
arts&crafts said:
Jays bullpen is not good.

Lets hope we score alot of runs this year
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The bullpen is far better than it was at the start of last season. It's better than it was after the deadline too.

The rotation seems to me where it could all break down. Estrada could regress, Dickey is almost guaranteed to, Happ could be Happ, and Stroman and Sanchez still have to a lot to prove. At least this year the Jays seem to have 3 or so replacement SPs.
 
S

ShaneB

Member
Glad baseball is back, but it's not really back until the weather warms up and I can listen to the games on the radio while relaxing outside.

Go Jays!
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
http://therenaissancefan.com/the-most-loyal-fans-in-baseball-nl-edition

We were interested in looking at how fans respond to bad play from their teams. We used season long average home game attendance as our measure of fan support, and total regular season losses as our measure of a team’s relative “lousiness”. We pulled data from the last 10 seasons for each MLB team (2006-2015). Using a program called R, we conducted a regression analysis and generated figures that look like this:

lh5FzSB.png


You can clearly see from this figure that average attendance at Pittsburgh Pirates home games drops in seasons where the Pirates are losing more (it should be noted that researchers in essentially all fields of science would KILL for data this tight). By looking at the relative slope of that line compared to the lines for other teams, we can determine which fan bases abandon their teams the most when times get tough (steep dropping line), and which ones stick it out through bad seasons (flatter line). We ran this analysis for each team and separated them into general categories based on what the stats told us.

This week we present the National League teams.
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THE LOYALISTS

REXxKT1.png


The Colorado Rockies rated as the most loyal NL fan base, showing very consistent attendance in both good seasons and bad. Hey, it’s Colorado, we know for a fact that the ball sails in the thin air which boosts offense. Maybe the promise of more offensive shoot-outs keeps attendance high even in seasons when the home team is losing a lot?

The St. Louis Cardinals are next in this group but with an asterisk. Over the last ten years (the data we used), the Cardinals have not had any truly bad seasons that would test a fan base’s loyalty (the worst season in that stretch was only 6 games under .500). But the numbers are what they are.

Cincinnati and San Francisco showed consistent attendance as well. And in the bottom half of this group we found the Diamondbacks, Cubs, Braves, and Padres to all have relatively loyal fans.

In general, the NL had more teams classified as “loyal” than the AL
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THE FANS THAT FADE

IPD2Tp3.png


The next group includes fan bases that show wavering attendance in bad seasons. It’s not a mad dash for the exit, but it’s a noticeable drop for these clubs. The LA Dodgers, Washington Nationals, and Milwaukee Brewers came out, in that order, as the next most loyal fans.
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THE FAIREST OF THE FAIR-WEATHER FANS

kZuhmYp.png


Now we come to the fairest of fair weather fan bases. The Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadephia Phillies, and New York Mets round out the bottom of the list. The figure for the Pirates was shown earlier, and I reiterate, that thing is tight! The pattern for the Phillies is similar:

U0KEdEB.png


Which leaves us with the Mets. Mets fans, particularly celebrity Mets fans, love to lament about how tortured they are as a fan base. But can you consider yourself a tortured (or loyal) fan base if you just stop coming to the ballpark in “bad” seasons? In seasons where the Mets are just a few games under .500 the average attendance is about 18,000 fans lower per game than seasons when they have a winning record.

Fair weather fandom at its finest.
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http://therenaissancefan.com/most-loyal-fans-al

THE LOYALISTS and the PERENNIALLY PACKED

QVAyn5C.png


The Detroit Tigers rated as the most loyal fan base, showing fairly consistent attendance at Comerica Park despite the record of Los Tigres. It should be noted that most of the Tigers’ seasons during this stretch were pretty good, with the worst season totaling only 88 loses. That certainly makes it easier for fans to keep the faith. Most Loyal Fans in Baseball

The Los Angeles Angels and the Seattle Mariners are next in this group, with each seeing only a slight dip in attendance during bad seasons. It’s interesting to see Seattle in this top group, particularly since Seattle Seahawks fans are often criticized for jumping on the band wagon as their team got good.

The Boston Red Sox are an interesting case and would have ranked second except for the fact that this data are unique compared to that of other teams. Fenway Park was literally at capacity 99.9% of the time during the span of time we looked at (according to ESPN). So we need to treat it a little differently. We can’t tell if the Red Sox lose fans in bad seasons (of which they have had a few recently) because that effect might be masked by other fans that could not previously get tickets filling in behind them. It’s possible this is more of a hot ticket than a loyal fan base, though we certainly won’t rule out the latter.
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THE FANS THAT FADE

Q3G3Fch.jpg


The next group includes fan bases that show wavering attendance in bad seasons. It’s not a mad dash for the exit, but it’s a noticeable drop for these clubs. The Oakland A’s, Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays, Baltimore Orioles, Texas Rangers, and Toronto Blue Jays came out, in that order, as the next most loyal fans.

Tampa Bay is an interesting case because the fan base (or lack thereof) in West Florida is often spoken of disparagingly by the rest of the country for not appreciating the Rays, who were a really good team for many of the years included in this analysis. And Tampa Bay did in fact have the lowest average attendance compared to all other teams. But the reason they showed up in the dead middle of the pack in this analysis is that the attendance, while low to begin with, doesn’t drop off in bad seasons as much as it does for many other teams. We were not interested in measuring how many fans a particular team has (that data is easily available); we wanted to see how those fans react to losing. In Tampa Bay’s case, attendance is low when they are good and not too different when they are bad.
Click to expand...

THE FAIREST OF THE FAIR-WEATHER FANS

SrvnR2R.png


Now we come to the fairest of fair weather fan bases. The Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros were next on the list for the AL. We can forgive the Astros fans. A few of the seasons in the last decade have been just turrible (as Sir Charles would say). That might make the revival that the ‘Stros are now experiencing all the more sweet for their fans.

The World Champion Kansas City Royals own the lowest spot on our list for fan loyalty. But, there’s a twist here. In the case of the Royals, the effect was not really fans abandoning the team in bad seasons, so much as flocking to the team in droves during good seasons, particularly 2015. An attendance spike in a season with few losses has the same effect in our analysis as a season with a lot of losses and poor attendance. It’s still fair weather fandom (the attendance in 2015 was 61% higher than the average for the other years we looked at), but it’s different than fans that won’t show up to watch a bad team.

vMgZBkP.png
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B

bonesmccoy

Banned
zroid said:
it's pretty darn good, but relative to the Yankees and Red Sox is seems a little weak :(
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Absolutely. But it's improved enough so that the Jays should have better than a .500 record at the deadline (even before factoring in the defensive and lineup upgrades).
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Buster Olney @Buster_ESPN

The 1st power rankings of the 2016 season: 1. Cubs 2. Royals 3. Jays 4. Rangers 5. Nationals 6. SF 7. STL 8. PIT 9. Mets 10. HOU Fire away.
 
R

RBH

Member
XiaNaphryz said:
3 of the NL West make it in the top group. 3 of the NL East make it in the bottom group!
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I laughed at the Mets fan in the comments section of the NL article.

The whole "Braves don't sell out in the playoffs" schtick hasn't been true for ages and initially got perpetuated because of a game or two not selling out in the late 90's/early 00's.

If anything, that guy needs to look within his own city:


yankeestadium-16_9.jpg


http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2012/10/14/yankee-stadium-crowd-empty-seats-game-2/1633317/
 
C

CosmicQueso

Member
Goal this year is get to Coors and Safeco and then various LA, Anaheim, SD and Oak games. Going to try to get to all SoCal Cal League parks too. I like Rancho Cucamonnga a lot.
 
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