Fans return to the stands to watch crown battles

Even with the homer heroics of sluggers like Aaron Judge and Albert Pujols, Ma- jor League Baseball wasn’t able to coax fans to ballparks at pre-pandemic levels this season, though attendance did jump substantially from the COVID-19 affected campaign in 2021.

The 30 MLB teams drew nearly 64.6 million fans for the regular season that ended Wednesday, which is up from the 45.3 million who attended games in 2021, ac- cording to baseball-refer- ence.com. This year’s numbers are still down from the 68.5 million who attended games in 2019, which was the last season that wasn’t affected by the pandemic.

The 2022 average of 26,843 fans per game throughout the league was down 5.3% from the 2019 average of 28,339.

The 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers led baseball with 3.86 million fans flocking to Dodger Stadium for an average of 47,672 per contest. The Oakland Athletics — who lost 102 games, play in an aging stadium and are the constant subject of relocation rumors — finished last, drawing just 787,902 fans for an average of less than 10,000 per game.

The St. Louis Cardinals finished second, drawing 3.32 million fans. They were followed by the Yankees (3.14 million), defending World Series champion Braves (3.13 million) and Padres (2.99 million).

The Toronto Blue Jays saw the biggest jump in attendance, rising from 805,901 fans to about 2.65 million. They were followed by the Cardinals, Yankees, Mariners, Dodgers, and Mets, which all drew more than a million fans more than in 2021.

The Rangers and Reds were the only teams to draw fewer fans than in 2021.

Only the Rangers started the 2021 season at full capacity and all 30 teams weren’t at 100% until July. It was a huge reason why an average of only 18,901 fans came to games.

USE OF IL LIST DROPS >> Use of Major League Baseball’s injured list declined by 13% this season and time lost fell by 4%.

There were 854 placements on the injured list through the end of the regular season on Wednesday. That was down from 983 placements in 2021, the first full season following a schedule curtailed to 60 games because of the pandemic.

Days lost to time on the injured list totaled 41,916, down from 43,513 in 2021, VIDEO REVIEWS ONLY HALF SUCCESSFUL >> Just over half of the 1,261 video review challenges made by teams in the major leagues were successful this season.

Major League Baseball said Monday that 633 calls challenged by clubs were overturned, which comes to 50.2%. There were 240 calls confirmed and 388 allowed to stand — where there was not enough evidence to confirm or overturn.

Going into the final three days of the season, the New York Mets led with a 77.8% success rate, followed by St. Louis (62.2%) and Cleveland (61%).

Oakland (38.5%) and the Los Angeles Dodgers (39.5%) were the least successful.

In addition, there were 173 crew chief reviews initiated by umpires. MLB said 35 were overturned, a 20.2% rate. Seventy-seven calls were confirmed and 40 allowed to stand. Of the crew chief reviews, seven were for rules checks and 14 for record-keeping.