Photo credit: Jean-Gabriel Fernandez
On the field it was a matchup between the third place team in the NL Central and the fifth place team in the NL East, but Saturday’s Brewers/Nationals doubleheader may have contributed to a lasting impact on the game of baseball beyond what would normally be expected from a similar matchup.
2021 is the second season under a set of Major League Baseball’s temporary but indefinitely implemented rules, including one reducing games to seven innings during doubleheaders. In 2020 that change allowed teams to relatively quickly play back-to-back contests to make up extended stretches of games postponed due to COVID-19 concerns.
Baseball economics added a new wrinkle to that picture in 2021, however: Teams are still playing doubleheaders this year, but with teams eager to maximize revenue they’re now splitting those contests into day/night, dual admission affairs.
As such, when Friday night’s game at Nationals Park was rained out the Nationals had less than 24 hours to sell tickets for a single, previously scheduled seven inning game at 1 p.m. Central time on Saturday. Despite that short notice and a weather forecast that cast doubt upon their ability to play, 9,910 fans still paid to see the abbreviated matinee. That same day 12,529 fans paid to see the day’s second game, although most of them likely purchased their tickets before the scheduled contest was reduced from nine innings to seven. Nationals Park is currently limited to 36% capacity, so those two totals represented about 75% of all available tickets.
Drawing Scrutiny
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The Brewers and Nationals aren’t the only teams that have played or will play dual admission seven inning doubleheaders this season, but the anecdotal data from those games will likely draw some increased scrutiny from MLB. The concept of reducing all major league games to seven innings is something baseball writers and executives have been discussing for years. This season, however, is MLB’s first opportunity to see how fans will react to paying full price for the ability to watch less baseball.
Pace of play and the length of baseball games are a longstanding discussion around the sport, although discussions about reducing the time between pitches seems to have dissipated since commissioner Rob Manfred revealed that the sport’s slow pace was actually attractive to gamblers. If MLB is not, in fact, interested in creating new rules or enforcing its existing rules to make the game move faster, then their only alternative to shorten the length of games is to abbreviate the games.
Shortening games would create an array of strategy questions. How would MLB’s already-sagging offenses, for example, respond to a hitting environment where the game’s most unhittable relievers are able to work a larger percentage of their team’s innings?
MLB’s recent behavior, however, suggests they may be more interested in the economic questions: Would a shorter game raise the demand for advertising during the game’s remaining innings enough to compensate for the loss of at least four commercial breaks in each broadcast? Will teams still stop selling alcohol with two innings to play, and how significant is that loss in concession revenue? Will fans still be willing to pay current ticket prices (and drive in from hours away) to see less baseball?
The answer to the latter question likely varies market-to-market. The Nationals, for example, can draw from a much larger population living within a short drive or public transit ride from their facility. The Brewers and many of the Midwest’s other teams, however, largely depend on fans’ willingness to take on a longer journey to take in a game. It’s unclear how those fans’ mental calculus will look if they’re asked to decide if a multiple-hour round trip is still worth it to see an abbreviated game.
Nonetheless, the data generated by days like Saturday will almost certainly be a factor when the time comes for baseball to make tough decisions about the future of the sport. If fans prove to be willing to spend the same amount of money on less baseball, then they may find less baseball on the schedule for decades to come.
