Miami Marlins need to spend April earning May attendance boost

The Miami Marlins love their fans...even if they aren't there.

If not quite a shot heard round the world, it was definitely a shot heard round seemingly every baseball themed corner of the internet. Certainly it reverberated through the nearly empty ballpark where Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara had just turned in his latest masterpiece: a 3-hit shutout, a Maddux no less, that secured a series win and a 5-1 record on the homestand.

An extremely poorly attended homestand that already had the Marlins as the butt of many a joke before the face of franchise noted the absence of fans during Wednesday's game, and ostensibly, their absence from every game since Opening Day (not a sellout either).

Putting aside the tenuous relationship between South Florida baseball fans and Marlins ownership (pick an owner, any owner), there were a bevy of reasons to partially explain the poor numbers for the final five games of Miami's season opening homestand. Miami Ultra. The Miami Open. Spring break for local schools drawing many local families away, and Spring Break capital S, capital B just continuing to cause havoc.

All of those events serving to keep locals from wanting to be anywhere near the Miami city limits. Particularly since the caliber of competition was about as poor as the schedule makers could offer. Enduring Miami's special cluster of traffic challenges is a big commitment, and it's far from unreasonable that many chose not to hazard it for the likes of the Chicago White Sox during the week, especially on a Wednesday afternoon.

In other words, a perfect storm of excuses that very likely kept thousands away from the ballpark. I'll even throw in one more, a point sagely raised by Isaac Azout of FishonFirst on Foul Territory on Thursday. Azout noted that a "baseball hangover" could have set in following the recent World Baseball Classic. Remember, it hasn't been six baseball free months down here in South Florida. It hadn't even been two weeks since loanDepot Park was treated to weeks of top-tier competition featuring some of the best players in the world. Again, just a perfect storm of reasons not to show.

All that being said, back to the elephant in the room...the elephant that Marlins owners have bludgeoned the fanbase with for decades. The 2011 film Moneyball gave rise to a popular meme about there being rich teams, poor teams, and fifty feet of something before arriving at the A's. For the Miami Marlins, that quote works equally well for finances as it does psychological trauma. Multiple firesales. Multiple failed rebuilds. Repeated promises of change, nearly all exposed as lies. Favored players traded again, and again, and again. The only constant has been the inconsistency. Well that, and the losing. Oh, and the lack of spending on payroll. Can't forget that.

So here the Marlins and their fans sit, locked in the same struggle they've been in for years, and one that makes that age-old riddle about the chicken or the egg seem about as easy as the A-B-Cs.

Do the Miami Marlins need to spend big on payroll, consistently, and drive up attendance numbers by proving their commitment to winning in the way that seems to speak more plainly to fans than wins and losses? Or do South Florida's fans need to give this ownership group a chance and let them off the hook for at least all the crimes of previous owners, and trust that they do have the consistent winning formula they claim to?

Both arguments make perfect sense, at least from the other side's perspective. Within the ranks of Marlins fans, there's even some division. The youngest and/or most zealous are inclined to agree that the ball is in the fans court- those that have stayed away must return and support this current incarnation of the team. Some of those fans believe this ownership has done nothing wrong (false), while others have just accepted the reality of the team's side: that they are not budging on this issue. Whereas the more hardened and grizzled of the Marlins fandom believe (correctly) theat they are in the right, and that South Florida fans deserve better.

Basically, a mess, with far too many viewing an issue with countless shades of gray as being inalterably black and white. And all that being the case before breaking down some of the more severe off-the-field obstacles like the stadium's location and the extremely front-running nature of the majority of Miami's ticket-buying populace. Really, nothing that has happened so far with Miami's attendance should have come as a surprise, save for the Marlins best player seemingly being tasked with lightly admonishing the undecideds.

Unfortunately for the Marlins, nothing with attendance is likely to change before May.

Partly, that's based on a belief that the Marlins just won't be winning this weekend's series against the New York Yankees. It's their home opener. They're the better team. The pitching matchups favor them. There's precisely zero shame in losing a series under those conditions...but that won't stop it from serving as proof of concept for every last one of those fans who couldn't be bothered to come out for games against weak competition that nothing has changed with the Marlins.

However, just as a big of a factor is the lack of unappealing matchups and unappealing game times the rest of April offers.

Ten more Marlins home games remain on the April docket but only three of them are on the weekend. All ten of those games are against NL Central opponents...and none of them are named the Chicago Cubs. Four weekday Reds games very likely coming off a series loss, to be followed a week later by a weekend series against baseball's most boring elite team, the Milwaukee Brewers. At least when the Bucks come to visit the Heat, they bring Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Brewers best player is out for weeks, and their next best is Christian Yelich, a walking reminder of one of three worst trades in Marlins history. Then another weekday series against another team way, way worse than Miami in the St. Louis Cardinals.

Now, should Miami actually go out and win big in the Bronx, there probably will be a slight bump in attendance when they return home to face the Reds. Only a slight one though, with the weekday problem still being a factor.

Survive all these April showers though, and the attendance spike flowers should blossom in May. Seventeen home games await, fourteen of them against the NL East. The other three, a very exciting and star laden Orioles squad. Plus, if the Marlins are in good shape record wise at that point, they will have extensively proven their worth and shown that they are a team capable of competing against anyone. Not just the weakest competition.

That's when the attendance numbers will start to boost...if they are going to.