Every year, at some point, Cleveland Indians fans go to task over attendance on social media and talk radio. In 2019, the ramifications of the team’s lacking turnout have actually manifested itself. The conversation will naturally reoccur prior to the winter.

Attendance is back in the national conversation due to Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg’s plan to split time between St. Petersburg and Montreal. The idea in itself is flawed, if not a breach of the team’s contract with Tropicana Field.

The stigma around Tampa’s domed stadium — the only non-retractable roof still in the game — is that it is a horrible venue for baseball. This writer disagrees, without necessarily placing it above being the worst in the game.

The reason the Tampa Bay Rays cannot draw consistent crowds are two-fold. While team and stadium quality are often the first two topics brought up when talking attendance, both issues with a St. Petersburg are civic matter.

Fewer people live within a 30-minute drive to the Trop than any other stadium in baseball. As a matter of fact, the Fresno Grizzlies, Durham Bulls, and other minor league teams have a larger population in that radius than the Rays do in St. Pete.

Michael Lortz, who compiled that data, also wrote of the importance of the 30-mile radius on FanGraphs in 2015.

Generally, when you are grabbing from a smaller population than other areas, it is important to have a community that is either walkable, or utilizes an efficient public transit system. In St. Petersburg, there are neither.

To reach Tropicana Field from Tampa, one must cross the I-275 bridge, a 4.14 mile, four-lane highway. In order to reach the stadium for a 7:05 first pitch, someone working a normal 9-to-5 job is not afforded much time in between work and rush hour traffic.

This writer decided to take the team up on a $10 ticket offer to see Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani come to town on June 14. I left work, picked up my wife at home, and departed for what is often an hour drive, at 5:30. In 2014, Lortz discovered there was an average 28 minute delay per hour driven in Tampa during rush hour.

Naturally, we missed the entirety of the first inning, including Trout (, Yandy Diaz,) and Ohtani’s first at-bats. Not exactly great for the consumer.

All issues mentioned here have created a perfect mess for Sternberg’s organization, and now he has resorted to out of the box measures to try and drum up revenue between now and the lease’s expiry in 2027.

(The Rays announced Thursday that their series against the Baltimore Orioles would feature $2 tickets, an attempt to coax any willing fans to the stadium, or perhaps further prove their desperation.)

Cleveland has an attendance problem, but they certainly do not have a stadium or (relative) quality issue. The team currently sits sixth in the American League in attendance per game at 19,279, down 2,436 per night. Granted, the weather has just begun to heat up, and so should the attendance.

The Indians’ payroll is an issue in comparison to other struggling organizations. Almost 600 more fans turn out to White Sox games per night, despite almost half the payroll. Those issues exist, and Paul Dolan has a point.

Throwing out the stadium quality issue, the Indians and Rays have similar disparities in fan support to roster quality. Perhaps there are parallels in those civic issues, as well.

According to the 2000 census, only eight teams had lower populations within a 30-minute radius: the Rays, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, and Milwaukee Brewers.

Of those eight teams, only the Pirates, Royals, and Rays are currently turning out lower attendance than the Indians.

Again, let’s consider the cold weather, and this time factor in the negative fan sentiment following a slow winter.

In 2018, the Indians outperformed the Royals, Reds, Pirates and Rays. In 2017, coming off of a World Series berth, Cleveland outperformed the Pirates, Reds and Rays. Obviously, the 30-minute radius has not stopped Mariners fans from turning out, even despite zero playoff bids since 2001.

What about transportation?

Remember that 28 minute delay per hour driven in Tampa? That ranks 20th in the US, and 207th in the world. In Cleveland, that number is 16 minutes per hour in the evening, 70th in the US, and 386th in the world. Only Kansas City has better traffic than Cleveland by minutes lost.

Getting to Progressive Field by car is not the issue, but what about public transit?

In 2014, FiveThirtyEight examined which metro area get the most use out of their public transit — dividing trip numbers from the National Transit Database in 2013 by 2012 population estimates from the American Community Survey, resulting in “trips per capita.”

In that study, only St. Louis, Dallas, Houston, Cincinnati, Tampa, Detroit and Kansas City used public transportation less than in Cleveland. Among metro areas with a lower population than Cleveland, only Cincinnati and Kansas City had fewer rides per capita.

I try to be helpful, so here it all is in a chart.

Population and attendance by MLB metro area Metro area 30-min population (M) Rank Congestion/30 min. (Evening) Rank Trips per capita Rank Average rank Metro area 30-min population (M) Rank Congestion/30 min. (Evening) Rank Trips per capita Rank Average rank New York (2) 8 1 21 2 229.8 1 1.33 Los Angeles (2) 3.12 3 24 1 54.9 8 4.00 San Francisco (2) 1.92 9 20 3 131.5 2 4.67 Washington 2.25 6 18 7 99.6 3 5.33 Chicago (2) 3.86 2 17 10 74.7 5 5.67 Boston 2.06 7 16 11 94.3 4 7.33 Philadelphia 2.79 4 15 13 67.8 6 7.67 Seattle 1.49 18 20 3 63.6 7 9.33 Atlanta 1.64 14 19 5 29.9 16 11.67 Miami 1.59 15 19 5 30.1 15 11.67 Houston 2.01 8 18 7 16.4 20 11.67 Denver 1.76 12 15 13 41.1 10 11.67 Baltimore 1.72 13 14 15 47.4 9 12.33 San Diego 1.46 19 18 7 34.2 13 13.00 Minneapolis 1.91 10 12 18 34.9 12 13.33 Dallas-Fort Worth 1.77 11 14 15 14.7 21 15.67 Detroit 2.27 5 12 18 11.3 24 15.67 Pittsburgh 1.18 24 14 15 37.8 11 16.67 St. Louis 1.59 16 11 21 23.4 18 18.33 Cleveland 1.53 17 8 24 28.3 17 19.33 Tampa 0.67 25 16 11 12.3 23 19.67 Phoenix 1.44 20 11 21 20 19 20.00 Milwaukee 1.21 23 9 23 32.1 14 20.00 Cincinnati 1.28 21 12 18 12.8 22 20.33 Kansas City 1.25 22 8 24 10.9 25 23.67

Of course, there are plenty more reasons why attendance issues could come up. The three measures used here are not only spanning over almost an entire two decades of difference, none of them are the end-all, be-all. They are simply measuring sticks.

As for comparing the Indians to the Rays, the prospect of a potential move are not similar. Baseball never should have come to St. Pete, while the ‘90s showed how it can thrive in Cleveland. However, just looking at some indicators of who can come to the ballpark, and how they get there, it becomes clearer that the cost-cutting reality in Cleveland is here to stay.

Or maybe, just maybe, team owners/governors could pitch in to improve the public transit in Cleveland. Extend the rapid, improve the RTA system, and stop spending tax dollars on stadium renovations. You know, reach into the community.

Who knows. Just spit-balling.