MIAMI — The Marlins’ attendance problems are a lot like the A’s attendance problems, but the Marlins have no excuse because they’ve got a new ballpark and the A’s play in a structure that was built in the Lyndon Johnson administration.

The Giants visited South Florida for a four-game series that ended Thursday, and few folks showed up. The announced attendance figures were 6,023, 5,928, 6,075 and, because the finale was a kids’ day promotion, 9,726.

That’s an embarrassment anywhere, especially for a franchise that opened a new yard six years ago. The aftereffects of a horrible Jeffrey Loria ownership and the roster teardown under new CEO Derek Jeter have left the fan base disinterested and unwilling to support the franchise, which is in its 25th anniversary season.

“It may be tougher on the other team,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said when I asked about playing before tiny gatherings. “A team like San Francisco comes in, they’ve got good crowds out there, a lot of energy around their ballpark. They come in here and play in a flat environment, it’s a little tougher on them. We’re used to it.”

The empty seats in Marlins Park reaffirm that Major League Baseball’s attendance problems — from this time last year, crowd counts are down nearly 7 percent across MLB — aren’t exclusive to the A’s and Rays, the teams most in need of new ballparks. Commissioner Rob Manfred wants to expand from 30 teams to 32 but said expansion won’t be on the table until the A’s and Rays address their stadium woes.

The Marlins’ issues are just as serious if only because “if you build it, they will come” isn’t necessarily true if the wrong people are running the team, which was the case with Loria and Co., which left Jeter, who has made plenty of mistakes since taking over in October, in position to go nowhere but up.

Mattingly has overlapped both ownerships and said he appreciates how Jeter is gearing toward the long term, in the community and on the field.

“We’re all involved from the standpoint of wanting to put a product out there that people like,” Mattingly said. “Derek talks about sustainable success, building through our minor leagues, adding good young players, building trust in the community.

“It’s a great ballpark. Hopefully, when fans learn to trust the organization and where we’re going, they’ll show up.”

One change for which Jeter should be commended is his intention to be transparent when reporting game attendance and counting only tickets sold, a far cry from how Loria’s group fudged the numbers.

David Samson, Loria’s stepson and the Marlins’ former president, confessed the previous group would buy thousands of tickets to make it appear attendance was higher than it actually was.

“We would make sure if the numbers were lower than we would’ve liked, we would go ahead and buy tickets for, let’s say, a dollar to announce that as part of our attendance,” Samson said last week on Dan Le Batard’s ESPN show.

The shady practice was conducted to build momentum with fans and corporate sponsors.

“When you’re not winning games,” Samson said, “you gotta do anything you can so your sponsors and your fans feel good about being part of it. … All we did was make the average ticket price much lower by having so many tickets purchased at a dollar.”

Disturbing stuff even for the Loria group, but it has been speculated forever that teams pad attendance numbers. The A’s say they’re more transparent than in the past with reporting crowd counts, an edict from Dave Kaval, who’s in his second season as A’s president.

So if both Jeter and Kaval are moving on from suspicious methods of the past, perhaps other teams are reporting exaggerated numbers and should be policed better. An MLB spokesman said the standard is paid attendance and that an independent firm conducts an audit of gate receipts after every season.

As for the Giants, they announced 530 straight sellouts through July, and while they said only the number of tickets sold were announced, tickets distributed — including complimentary passes for players, employers and sponsors — were included in the sellout equation.

The Giants’ attendance is down 6.7 percent while the A’s (saying they’re more transparent in reporting crowd figures) are down 10.9 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. Weather can be blamed in other areas for dwindling attendance, along with the fact that several teams are rebuilding (tanking, actually) and buried in the standings.

Another factor could be the decreased amount of action caused by increased strikeouts and home-run approaches and less emphasis on the game’s little things needed to manufacture rallies.

The Marlins rank last in the majors in attendance, one spot ahead of the Rays and two ahead of the A’s.

Hammer time: Hank Aaron treated the baseball world to stories, insights and laughs for four innings of Tuesday’s Braves-Mets broadcast on ESPN, and Giants broadcaster Dave Flemming was fortunate enough to be along the ride.

“One thing about being with the Giants, we get so much exposure to our legends,” Flemming said. “Hank, I feel, and maybe it’s just his choice, he’s just a private person, of all the living greats, I feel I see Hank the least. That’s the way he is. He keeps a low profile.

“I thought it was great for us and everybody to get to see he’s doing so well. He’s so sharp and had all these memories of his earliest days of his career from the time he grew up as a kid and remembered things perfectly.”

Such as the little-known story of Hank batting crosshanded (left hand above his right) until going conventional and early thoughts of being a switch-hitter.

“He said one day he was taking batting practice left-handed, the bat slipped out of his hands, hit a teammate in the nose, and he decided, ‘Oh, forget it, I’m not going to do that.’ He went back to just right-handed,” Flemming said.

Aaron touched on the discrimination he experienced in the minors and through his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record, and interviews were played of Willie Mays, former teammate Dusty Baker and several others.

ESPN did a Mays tribute game last year, though Willie wasn’t in the booth. The format with Aaron worked well, and the network is considering celebrating other legends in future games. Good call.

John Shea is The San Francisco Chronicle’s national baseball writer. Email: jshea@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnSheaHey