A take on the attendance this week

The Orioles' attendance is up over last year and the club is on pace to attract over two million fans to Camden Yards for the first time since 2007. But they have not exactly been packing them in on this current homestand. Even though the Orioles returned home Monday riding high off winning back-to-back series on the road against New York and Tampa Bay, the four home games this week have averaged just 18,789 fans. The average for the season is 25,821. To me, it's been a little surprising to not see more fans than that at the Yard this week. Certainly weekend games will generally draw better than weekday games, but a playoff contending O's club has played this week to an average crowd of 7,000 less than the average crowd for the entire season. I don't think we can read too much into these figures the last four days and there is certainly plenty of excitement and buzz around Baltimore for the Orioles, and was for yesterday's debut of Manny Machado. No doubt, there will be some good crowds on hand this weekend and if the O's stay in the race all the way to the end of the year, the attendance could be stronger than usual in September. I think some expected a crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 to greet the team on Monday night. That just didn't happen. While the interest level in the team is way up this August over some previously, it still takes a lot to get people to actually show up for the games. We've seen that dynamic at work this week.