A Data-Centric View on Why the Phillies May Want to Avoid Losing

On Sunday, I wrote about the Phillies offseason and how their seemingly wishy-washy approach to rebuilding may, possibly, potentially, could be perfectly rational. Buried within the article was a throwaway comment. I said:

The fans in Philadelphia simply don’t have patience for losers.

Commenters rightly pointed out that this is true of all teams. Instead of letting it go, I argued that Philly fans seem to respond more elastically than fans of other cities.

Perhaps this is a good time to share my credentials. I grew up 20 minutes from the Philadelphia sports complex. I had full season tickets at the Vet during those years when announced attendance was around 13,000 and actual attendance appeared closer to 3,000. The section security guard would sit down and watch part of the game with us because there was nothing to guard. He would go in the dugout between innings and come back with bazooka gum and sunflower seeds, sometimes with autographs. Those were my favorite years of baseball – between 1995 and 2001 – and my hometown Phillies were godawfulterrible.

I understand that there are many types of fans in Philadelphia, as there are many types of fans everywhere. There are fair weather fans, die hard fans, and plenty who fit somewhere in between. I recognize that it’s disingenuous to say “I grew up a Phillies fan, so I can say what I want about them.” I admit, it smells a little bit like “I have a black friend so it’s okay that I’m about to say something racist.” But I’ve also lived in four major league cities and Philadelphia is quite noticeably different in its fandom.

In the previously referenced article, commenter TeddyWestside said:

Sure some people will “run away” until we have a contender, but those aren’t real fans. Those are the people that go to games because it’s the “thing to do.” EVERY franchise has fans like that, so don’t you act like we are the only ones…Sure, when the team underperforms I am not going to 20 games a year. I’ll still go to a handful, but I’ll watch EVERY other game at home. Same goes for the other fans. We won’t spend our hard earned money to go watch a team lose, but bet your ass we support from our couches and bars. So don’t act like we are frontrunners, because you are way off base.

No, I’m not Jimmy Rollins and I’m not accusing you of being a front runner. This is a perfectly rational thing to do. When I attended those games at the Vet, my parents were able to buy excellent seats for $12 apiece. Similar seats now cost over $100 apiece. It’s not financially practical to attend ballgames unless you derive a lot of utility (happiness) from attending. Winning and playoff contention are an important element of that utility for most people.

TeddyWestside’s comment does strike at the heart of the matter. From the team’s perspective, the only thing that matters is that fans are spending less of their discretionary income on the team. Teddy has identified himself as the common man’s fan. Assuming this is true, he has also identified that his spending on the Phillies has/will decline due to the team’s poor play. I assume he would agree that the more the team loses, the less he would spend. TW’s still spending some money on the team, but there are actual bandwagon fans who stop spending altogether. This hurts the team’s bottom line, and it’s part of the reason why I consider it plausible that their current offseason strategy is the best one available for their unique circumstances.

I wanted to test this a little more vigorously using attendance data. Unfortunately, the computer I have with me doesn’t have anything more advanced than OpenOffice Calc, so we’ll have to keep things basic. I gathered attendance data from Baseball Reference on every National League team dating back to 1996. I restricted it to NL teams because I had to do a fair amount of manual data entry, and I included the Astros but dropped the Expos/Nationals. I then limited the list to seasons where attendance dropped by at least 10 percent. That left me with 33 seasons. The Cubs and Cardinals did not have any seasons where attendance declined by 10 percent.

Before reviewing the results, let’s make the shortcomings clear. This is a very simplistic analysis that ignores many factors. Since the data is not prepared properly, we can’t use it to draw meaningful conclusions. What we can do is take the information and form hypotheses to be tested later. Another shortcoming is that I’ve used attendance as a proxy for revenue. And keep in mind, my arbitrary cutoff was 10 percent, which is a large drop in attendance. Some teams saw long term trends that didn’t eclipse the 10 percent threshold. Lastly, no effort was spent in examining how quickly teams recover from bad seasons. In short, there are a lot of ways to slice and dice this data, but for the purpose of today, we’ll stick to a narrow focus.

As for the table headings, year is the year, team is the team, W’s Yr X is that year’s win total, W’s Yr X-1 is the previous season’s win total, and Atnd/gm is the attendance per game. I used per game attendance because the Phillies had one 84 home game season in the sample.

Year	Team	W’s Yr X-1	W’s Yr X	Change in Wins	Atnd/gm Yr	Pct Change in Atnd	Note
1997	Philadelphia Phillies	67	68	1	18403	-0.173
2000	Philadelphia Phillies	77	65	-12	19911	-0.116
2005	Philadelphia Phillies	86	88	2	32905	-0.180	New Park 2004
2013	Philadelphia Phillies	81	73	-8	37190	-0.155
2001	Atlanta Braves	95	88	-7	34858	-0.127
1998	Florida Marlins	92	54	-38	21363	-0.268
1999	Florida Marlins	54	64	10	17118	-0.199
2000	Florida Marlins	64	79	15	15041	-0.121
2013	Miami Marlins	69	62	-7	19584	-0.285	New Park 2012
2003	New York Mets	75	66	-9	26757	-0.227
2009	New York Mets	89	70	-19	39118	-0.216	New Park 2009
2010	New York Mets	70	79	9	31602	-0.192	New Park 2009
2002	Houston Astros	93	84	-9	31078	-0.133	New Park 2002
2009	Houston Astros	86	74	-12	31124	-0.104
2011	Houston Astros	76	56	-20	25519	-0.113
2012	Houston Astros	56	55	-1	19849	-0.222
2001	Cincinnati Reds	85	66	-19	23207	-0.262
2005	Cincinnati Reds	76	73	-3	23696	-0.161
2009	Cincinnati Reds	74	78	4	21579	-0.151
2002	Milwaukee Brewers	68	56	-12	24311	-0.299
2013	Milwaukee Brewers	83	74	-9	31248	-0.106
2002	Pittsburgh Pirates	62	72	10	22312	-0.267	New Park 2001
1999	Arizona Diamondbacks	65	100	35	37280	-0.164	2nd Yr of Franchise
2003	Arizona Diamondbacks	98	84	-14	34636	-0.123
2004	Arizona Diamondbacks	84	51	-33	31106	-0.102
2005	Arizona Diamondbacks	51	77	26	25425	-0.183
2009	Arizona Diamondbacks	81	70	-11	26281	-0.152
2002	Colorado Rockies	73	73		33800	-0.135
2005	Colorado Rockies	68	67	-1	23634	-0.181
2011	Los Angeles Dodgers	80	82	2	36236	-0.176
2008	San Diego Padres	89	63	-26	29970	-0.130
2009	San Diego Padres	63	75	12	23699	-0.209
2008	San Francisco Giants	71	72	1	35356	-0.112

The table is sortable, I left it sorted by team by year as the default. From this view, I’m mainly interested in the teams with multi-season drops in attendance, namely the Marlins, Mets, Astros, Padres, and Diamondbacks. Their experiences share some common characteristics.

After winning the World Series in 1997, the Marlins held a fire sale and lost over 100 games in 1998. Attendance fell precipitately that season. The team then improved it’s record by 10 games but saw a further drop in attendance. They only won 64 games, so that’s understandable. The next season, they won 79 games, yet still hemorrhaged fans. Our research on win curves and the link between winning and revenue suggests that they should have seen increased revenue as they moved from 54 to 79 wins over two seasons. With what we actually observed, they probably actually earned less revenue season to season.

Despite our assumptions about win curves and dollars per win, this isn’t a counter intuitive finding. The Marlins telegraphed their bad hand by conducting a fire sale, but most teams try to decline more quietly, thus milking a few extra dollars out of the fan base. It can take time for the common fan to realize that Ryan Howard isn’t a franchise cornerstone. Around here, we’ve known that for years, but there are still a ton of fans who are only just beginning to suspect.

The Mets are a weird one because they really screwed up with their new park. They opened their doors in teeth of the housing crisis, overpriced their seats, and were embroiled in the Bernie Madoff fiasco. The team did see a sharp performance decline, but the drop in attendance began due to other factors.

The Astros of the late 2000’s had a lot in common with today’s Phillies. They’re both formerly strong rosters who hung onto their core too long and began to decline. The Astros finally bit the bullet and went for the full rebuild. Attendance plummeted the first two seasons of the rebuild as the team dropped from 76 to 56 to 55 wins. Attendance between 2012 and 2013 was stable, indicating that the team has hit a trough. The Phillies already saw a sharp decline in attendance when dropping from 81 to 73 wins. A full rebuild could probably bring them to wherever their trough is within a couple seasons. Getting back out could be a problem.

The Diamondbacks story looks similar to the Marlins. Attendance dropped after winning the World Series. The team was actually decent in that first season, but then fell apart to win only 51 games. The following season, they won 26 more games but still lost droves of fans.

The Padres are another weird one. Ownership issues coincided with the team’s collapse which likely exacerbated the decline in attendance. Their attendance did jump about 3,000 fans per game with their 90 win season in 2010 and hasn’t moved since then despite three straight losing efforts.

Keeping in mind that a firm conclusion should not be reached with this data, there is some evidence that the decision to engage in a full rebuild could affect team finances for many seasons. Since the Phillies are locked into most of their core through the 2016 and 2017 seasons, it might be financially premature to begin a rebuild. If attendance declined to around 19,000 per game, like with the Astros, the Phillies could have trouble meeting payroll.

Some might suggest that they trade their pricey contracts, but that might not be an option. Cole Hamels may return a decent prospect from a rich team like the Dodgers, but what other expensive player could return an asset in trade? To trade Howard, Papelbon, or even Lee, the Phillies would need to take on extra salary. We can probably assume that attendance would take a nose dive if the Phillies waved the white flag by trading away their aging stars. If they have to take on extra salary in the process, they may end up fielding an Astros-style roster of minimum salary players, but with three times that cost in payments to other teams.

Businesses will often attempt to maximize revenue in the short run and worry about profit later. A full rebuild effectively minimizes revenue. For that reason alone, the Phillies might find it more financially prudent to rebuild the slow way. A few first overall picks might help speed up the rebuild process, but Philadelphia has experienced first hand that it’s no guarantee. After this analysis, I’m still inclined to say that the Phillies might be doing the right thing. Who knows. I am fairly confident in saying that rebuilding is not a one-size-fits-all activity, and we should stop assuming otherwise.