Maybe you don’t care about RBI. Maybe it’s WRC+ you couldn’t care less about. Whichever side of the statistical line you fall on, one number that you don’t care about at all is the New York Mets attendance.
Through 56 home games, the Mets are averaging just under 33,500 per game. With a home ballpark that can hold almost 42,000, you may have noticed a lot of empty seats at Citi Field this year.
Do fans not care? Not quite. Attendance numbers are down all across MLB. In fact, only five teams this season are averaging over 35,000 per game. The Mets are drawing about the same number of people as the Houston Astros are this year. They’re also at their highest in a couple of seasons, too.
We can’t even look at recent attendance numbers because of that pesky pandemic that just doesn’t seem to let life normalize again. The 2021 season had a delay before fans could return to the stands and in 2020 there was no one at all.
In 2019, the Mets averaged about 3,000 fewer people per game than they are this season. The level of excitement for this year’s team has been extraordinarily high and we’ll definitely have to take into account those final games. The Mets were still playing some slightly meaningful games in September of 2019 although it was more of a chase than preparation for the postseason.
A year earlier, the Mets were trade deadline sellers and didn’t even get to an average of 30,000 fans per game. In 2017, even with the benefit of the 2015-2016 postseason still lingering and plenty of tickets already sold, the team failed to reach an average home attendance of 31,000 fans.
We have to go back to 2016 when the Mets had an average of over 34,800 fans paying for tickets to find a total better than what they have right now. It’s not even that dramatically higher. With several more games on the home schedule and many of them having a ton of value towards the pennant, we can expect this to be one of the most attended seasons in recent team history.
Since Citi Field opened, it’s the inaugural season that had the highest average at 39,118 per game. Fresh from a World Series appearance, it was the 2016 team that had the second-highest attendance in Citi Field history.
It’s impossible for the Mets to get back to the 2006-2008 era when they averaged 41-49,000+ per game while finishing third, second, and finally first in National League attendance.
But we don’t care about that anyone. As long as we have our favorite spot on the couch, a winning team on the screen, and an awkward moment from Keith Hernandez, we’re set.
Next. Best outfield trios in Mets history. dark