After 20 games at SunTrust Park this season, roughly one-fourth of their home schedule, the Braves trail last year’s attendance pace.
They have drawn an average of 29,744 per game in announced attendance, down almost 6% from 31,556 through the same number of home games last year.
The Braves' attendance per game ranks 12th among the 30 MLB teams. Across MLB, average announced attendance* for all teams was 26,335 through Thursday, down 419 per game from the same point last year, according to baseball-reference.com.
The Philadelphia Phillies, boosted by the off-season additions of Bryce Harper and others, have posted the biggest gain, up 45 percent to an average of 36,464 per game. That moves the Phillies to fifth in MLB in attendance per game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers (47,481), St. Louis Cardinals (41,156), New York Yankees (39,817) and Los Angeles Angels (36,752).
It’ll be a while before the Braves’ next game at SunTrust Park. Their next 10 games are on the road – three at Miami, three at Los Angeles (Dodgers) and four at Arizona.
The Braves, who fell back below .500 at 15-16 with Thursday's 11-2 loss to San Diego, are 10-10 at home and 5-6 on the road so far this season.
(*MLB teams announce the number of tickets sold as the attendance. That’s a better method than used in other leagues; the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS announce “tickets distributed,” a measure some teams use to inflate their announced “attendance” by distributing however many unsold tickets they wish and counting them as “attendance” even if they’re not used. But even MLB’s “tickets sold” metric overstates the number of people actually in, you know, attendance.)
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LEADOFF LINKS
> Vince Dooley was working in the garden behind his house when he got the (overdue) word that the field at Sanford Stadium will be renamed in his honor. Read Chip Towers' reports here and here and Mark Bradley's column here.
> It's a new year. Are the Braves still a good team?
> Here's the story, from Ken Sugiura, of how Georgia Tech kicker Wesley Wells found out Thursday he had earned a scholarship.
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