Tampa Bay isn't worthy of the Rays

If a baseball team wins 99 games and earns a trip to the playoffs and nobody’s there to see it, did it even really happen?

Things ended abruptly for the Tampa Bay Rays after getting swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Texas Rangers. However, their remarkable 2023 season can’t be overlooked. This team started the year 23-6 and cruised to 99 wins, the fourth-best in MLB and the second-best tally in the team’s history.

Fans, however, didn’t seem to care. Or, they didn’t seem to care enough to come out to support their team. A paltry 19,704 showed up for Game 1 of the ALWC series. This was the lowest turnout for a playoff game in over a century, not including games taking place during the pandemic. So, after the outcry, more fans flocked to Tropicana Field for Game 2, right? Well, yes — about 500 more.

Unfortunately, this isn’t anything new for the Rays. Even with a great 2023, they had the third-lowest attendance in the league, with only the Marlins, Royals and A’s drawing fewer fans.

Over the last several seasons, the Rays have been one of the best teams in baseball. They’ve earned five-straight trips to the postseason, including a World Series berth in 2020. And in all of these seasons (excluding 2020), they have ranked in the bottom-four in attendance. In 2019, the Rays won 96 games, 49 more than the Detroit Tigers. Yet, the Tigers ended up drawing more than 320,000 fans that year.

This begs the question: If nobody cares about baseball in Tampa Bay, should the city even have a team? Many people have wondered this for a while, including Bob Ryan.