San Francisco Giants: Attendance down, still among best in baseball

Mired in a third consecutive losing season, the San Francisco Giants have seen a significant dip in attendance in 2019.

The San Francisco Giants are having a hard time packing fans into Oracle Park so far this season.

After losing 98 games in 2017 and 89 games in 2018, the Giants are off to a 21-29 start. That leaves them 11.5 games back in the NL West standings, and with a miserable minus-68 run differential, there appears to be little relief in sight.

So how significant is the dip in attendance?

It has been the worst in all of baseball year-over-year:

Attendance numbers, in general, tend to climb during the summer months when children are out of school and the weather improves.

Still, there is clearly more at work when attendance drops by more than 6,000 fans per game than some cold spring nights, and a mediocre on-field product is largely to blame.

It’s not as bad as it looks, though. Despite the downturn over last year, the Giants still rank 10th in the majors in average attendance.

Here’s a look at the full top 10:

1. Dodgers: 47,118
2. Cardinals: 41,662
3. Yankees: 39,749
4. Cubs: 36,242
5. Phillies: 35,946
6. Angels: 35,881
7. Red Sox: 34,321
8. Brewers: 33,567
9. Rockies: 32,893
10. Giants: 32,257

So while the Giants have seen a considerable dip in fans per game, they are still doing better than 66 percent of the league.

Bigger picture, things are also still way up over where they stood prior to the opening of AT&T Park back in 2000.

Here’s a look at the club’s average home attendance going all the way back to 1990:

Attendance peaked for the Giants during the 2011 season when they averaged 41,819 fans per game. That was the season immediately following their first World Series title since 1954.

It only makes sense that as they embark on the early stages of a rebuild, fan interest would dip a bit over the course of the season.

Props to the fans for still turning out at decent clip to watch a sub-.500 team. There is little doubt things will bounce back quickly once they return to contention.