MLB inching towards a small market WS
October 14th, 2020 at 6:03 PM ^
That's about as southern as MLB gets. Go Braves! Fuck the Yankees.
October 14th, 2020 at 6:10 PM ^
I wouldn't categorize Atlanta as a small market by any definition - whether it's by payroll (above the league average), geographic market, population, revenue, etc.
They're definitely not in the same league (pun intended) as the (damn) yankees, Dodgers, bosox, and 'stros, but their total 2020 payroll is more than twice that of the rays.
That said, I'm strongly rooting for the Braves to take down the Dodgers. I've hated the Dodgers since I was a kid growing up in Atlanta and the Braves were inexplicably in the NL West. I always thought it should've been the Cubs and Cards in the West instead of the Braves and Reds. Anyways, that's ancient history.
October 14th, 2020 at 10:09 PM ^
I watched the braves on tbs as a kid. They still do that?
October 15th, 2020 at 4:31 AM ^
what do you expect, this OP is awful
October 14th, 2020 at 6:11 PM ^
I would hardly call Atlanta "small market" anymore.
(edit @8:30 pm: I also want to commend you for the good OP. Though I edited your other OP today and issued you a warning because of the nature of what I deleted, I'm pretty damn confident that you get it and there won't be a recurrence.)
October 14th, 2020 at 6:27 PM ^
Especially in baseball. The Braves have a large fanbase in the surrounding states in the Southeast as it was the only team in the Southeast until expansion to Florida in the 1990s.
October 14th, 2020 at 6:43 PM ^
Besides the fact that Atlanta is considered the Capitol of the South and has one of if not the busiest airport in the country.
October 14th, 2020 at 7:55 PM ^
*world
October 14th, 2020 at 8:43 PM ^
Ignorance here but I've always wondered how and why that airport is the busiest??!
October 14th, 2020 at 8:50 PM ^
This is old but I think it gets at some of the important points:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130207-why-is-atlanta-the-worlds-busiest-airport
October 14th, 2020 at 9:45 PM ^
It's more about connections that anything else. Has anyone here not had a layover in Atlanta? If you're flying to or from anywhere in the South East US (plus the Caribbean) there's a good chance your layover is in ATL. It's by far the biggest city in the South (I don't include Miami, it's not really "the south" plus it's way out of the way for almost all domestic travel). It's similar to Chicago in that regard, but Chicago splits its traffic between two airports, with one of the busiest airlines in the country (SWA) going exclusively through Midway.
October 14th, 2020 at 6:36 PM ^
And the Dodgers go up 7-0 in the first.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:24 PM ^
15 - 1
October 14th, 2020 at 6:48 PM ^
The Braves also have an outsize national following because their games were on TBS in the early days of multi-system cable (80s and 90s). Along with the Cubs (WGN), they were one of the few teams to have a majority of their games aired nationally.
October 14th, 2020 at 7:01 PM ^
They've been my NL team since the early '90s thanks to TBS and their WS runs.
October 14th, 2020 at 7:52 PM ^
Exactly! Hilariously, my great-grandparents and my other Montana relatives were Braves fans because of TBS. I would wager Montana is 50% Seattle fans, 30% Braves fans.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:06 PM ^
In the 1991 WS, my cousin and I made paper tomahawks while we were staying the night at my grandmother's house for the weekend. She was the biggest Tigers' fan ever, and was rooting for the AL team, the Twins.
So we're Tomahawk Chopping during the game. (I was 10, he was 12. We didn't realize the cultural implications. ) Of course the Twins won, and Grandma was right as always.
October 15th, 2020 at 1:56 AM ^
When I got cable in 1987, the Braves sucked. I tried to cheer for them because they were so bad. That made 1991 that much sweeter when they became good.
October 14th, 2020 at 7:07 PM ^
this was an unprecedented jinx
October 14th, 2020 at 8:17 PM ^
My evil empire yankees will strike back soon enough.
Seriously, though I am so glad the Rays are beating the astros cheating butts.
Also, Atlanta is not a small market.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:21 PM ^
Holy shit that was a brutal 1st inning for ATL tonight. Oof.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:35 PM ^
LAD is the better team, but Fried and Anderson with some big bats could still win the series for the Braves, as they did in games 1 and 2. They really could have used Soroka and probably Hamels against the Dodgers.
But as long as the Rays beat the Astros, I'm good.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:49 PM ^
Should have been a 2-0 inning but whatever. Fuck the Dodgers.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:42 PM ^
Is this for real? Atlanta is huge. And the population in the Tampa Bay Area definitely isn’t small...
October 14th, 2020 at 9:48 PM ^
Regarding Tampa, you're right, but that's not really how "small market" is defined in this context. TB is definitely a small market baseball team.
I'm with you on Atlanta, I don't consider that a small market team (at least in terms of baseball) but some consider anything that isn't NY, LA, SF, Dallas, Houston, Chicago to be small market. Usually Detroit is considered a small market as is Oakland, despite being in the Bay Area.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:43 PM ^
Atlanta is NOT a small market. They may be just inside one of the top 10 biggest markets in the league. Huge city, ton of fans, loaded with history, and they’re really the South’s team (Florida is not the South). Braves draw extremely well from folks in Mississippi, Alabama, the Carolinas and Tennessee. They’ve got a ton of Florida fans too, as the Braves were the only baseball ticket in town for the South until the 90s rolled around.
As for Tampa....yeah no disputing that. Tampa has got a lot of baseball fans, but they’re largely transplants from up north. Especially with the Yankees having spring training right down the road.
October 14th, 2020 at 8:53 PM ^
Tampa Bay is bigger than you think.
October 14th, 2020 at 9:51 PM ^
As someone who spent nearly 20 years of his life living in Tampa, I can safely say the Rays are a small market team. The team has been pretty good for about 10 years and yet they routinely are one of the worst attended teams in the game. Probably the worst after Miami. Having a dump of a stadium out in St. Pete doesn’t help, but if they’re winning, people should still want to go. And they don’t.
Tampa is definitely a town with a lot of baseball fans, but a sizable chunk of them, if not a majority, are not Rays fans. Tampa is crawling with Yankees fans and easily outnumber Rays fans at Tropicana when they’re in town.
October 15th, 2020 at 9:43 AM ^
So... "small market" is an attendance term, not a population term? Didn't realize that.
October 15th, 2020 at 11:17 AM ^
It's not exclusively either. It is a term about the "market" which certainly includes population, but not in a vacuum. St Louis isn't one of the bigger cities in MLB but is often lumped into the big market teams because the fanbase there is baseball crazy, they pack the stadium, buy a bunch of Cardinals gear and wear it around town, and are just generally very passionate about their team. Not unlike Michigan and Michigan football. Michigan is not the biggest state in the country nor in the biggest city but we have a huge fanbase and the biggest stadium and are a huge market college football team.
On the other end, you could have a school like ASU which has a larger attendance than Michigan and is in a much larger city but is certainly not a big market college football team like we are. This is not a perfect analogy, but I think it works. Maybe another similar analogy would be NHL teams, where a smaller city in Canada is actually a bigger "market" than the Dallas Stars, but this is just an example.
October 14th, 2020 at 9:05 PM ^
The difference between Tampa and Atlanta in terms of payroll (~$35M) is greater than the difference between Atlanta and any team higher up the payroll ranking other than LAD and NYY. It is great to see Tampa possibly get a shot at a title, and Atlanta has done well without massive overspending, but it's a middle-class team in the MLB.
October 14th, 2020 at 9:09 PM ^
I wouldn't have called ATL small market either so I went to find this..
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/nba-market-size-nfl-mlb-nhl-nielsen-ratings/
Surprised me a little that Detroit is 14 and Cincy is the smallest MLB market (even if the data is a year old).
October 14th, 2020 at 9:13 PM ^
Anybody but the Astros.
October 14th, 2020 at 10:15 PM ^
The Braves are a small market/small payroll team? What world do you live in?
October 14th, 2020 at 10:36 PM ^
LOL...Dodgers series is going 7
October 15th, 2020 at 4:30 AM ^
nice jinx! this post has zero value, which is more than it had before game 3 started
October 15th, 2020 at 6:11 AM ^
You jimxed 2 teams in one OP. That's gotta be a record.
October 15th, 2020 at 9:17 AM ^
This no fans thing seems to be really working out for the Rays. They should see about keeping that going after the COVID-era.
October 15th, 2020 at 11:54 AM ^
The 2019 Nielson TV market size rankings has ATL as #10 with 2.3M households. The TPA market, should Tampa make it to the WS is #11. Though not gliztsy like NY & LA, doesn't mean they are not major markets.