The Nationals just wrapped up a season that offered enough to stir some hope: a new baseball operations team, a new manager, All-Star nods for CJ Abrams and James Wood, the rise of Cade Cavalli, and a stretch where Washington was at least in the playoff conversation in July.
And yet the number that stands out most is a bleak one.
Nationals Park drew 1,839,116 fans this season, according to ESPN, the club’s lowest home attendance since 2010. That total ranked eighth-worst in Major League Baseball.
Washington finished one spot ahead of the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards, but still drew fewer fans than the Los Angeles Angels, who had 2.63 million, and the Colorado Rockies, who finished with 2.24 million. The Nationals averaged 22,705 per game, which works out to about 55% of the ballpark filled on a typical night.
So what happened?
There isn’t one clean answer. Washington played 81 home games, and not every club did. Baltimore, for example, hosted only 80 games at Camden Yards, and if that extra game had been played with roughly 10,000 fans in the building, the Nationals would have slipped another spot in the attendance rankings.
The teams that finished ahead of Washington largely fit into a few clear groups. Eleven were playoff clubs: the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox, Atlanta Braves, Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, Cleveland Guardians, and Chicago White Sox.
Four more sat in the “expected” or fringe contender lane: the Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners, Detroit Tigers, and Arizona Diamondbacks.
Then there were the clubs with massive markets or long-established fan bases: the San Francisco Giants, New York Mets, Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers, St. Louis Cardinals, and Cincinnati Reds.
And, somehow, the Colorado Rockies kept packing Coors Field for a 58-win team.
That leaves the Nationals in an awkward spot. They don’t fit neatly into any of those attendance drivers right now, and that’s the heart of the problem.
The old line, “If you build it, they will come,” comes to mind here. Spend money, win games, and fans show up.
The Nationals and the Lerner family know that as well as anyone. In the 2010s, Washington was routinely a top-10 payroll team and regularly drew more than 2 million fans as a result.
Some clubs beat expectations and reached the postseason. That happened, and the Chicago White Sox deserve credit for it.
Some big spenders fell flat and missed the playoffs. That happened too, with the Mariners and Blue Jays.
The broader point is hard to miss: there seems to be a connection between winning, payroll, and the teams that keep their ballparks full. Washington is a top-10 sports market. The question is why it isn’t spending like one.
That conversation is coming again, especially with the impending lockout on the horizon. For now, the answer is simpler: win more, get back into the race, and Navy Yard can fill up again, night after night.
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