Happy Wednesday,
Post-Dispatch sports columnist Ben Frederickson here. This week's questions will be answered below. Thanks, and please don't be shy about sending in any questions or comments you want to see tackled. Have a great rest of your week!Â
Got a question? Email me here (bfrederickson@post-dispatch.com) or find me on X (formerly known as Twitter) at and hashtag your question with #BF5.
We had some great questions this week, so let's dive right in. Thanks for sending them my way. Keep them coming.
Got a question or comment for me? Let me know and I'll answer it here.
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This week's spotlight goes to . . . Joe, via Twitter.
Q: What's your personal opinion on why Cardinals attendance is lacking?
BenFred:Â Personally I wanted to wait and see what crowds were like once school was out for the summer before reacting too much, because that's the one thing the Cardinals (and any team) will point to before that point as a reason to press pause on meaningful observations. Well, school is out now and both the announced attendance totals (tickets purchased) and the rears-in-seats eye test (those numbers are not made public) show people are less interested in attending games. There are a lot of reasons. Lack of meaningful playoff success is a growing trend for the franchise. Last-place finish last season. A perceived lack of fire and some poorly received comments from ownership lately. Legitimate front-office fatigue. I don't think the manager is the big problem, but some fans are out on him. A slow but certain surrendering of what used to be a home-field advantage. No more Adam Wainwright, Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina to go see before it's too late. Concerns about the state of downtown, which are not to be ignored. Add it all up and you have a recipe for attendance sag. There also should be some perspective here. The Cardinals are still a top-6 team in announced average attendance, averaging 36,983. That's just behind the powerhouse Atlanta Braves (37,848), who are a heavyweight contender in a still-new ballpark. What's as telling as anything is how discounted some Cardinals tickets have been and the deals the team is running to try to get people in the ballpark. This is absolutely a story to continue to monitor over the summer. Fans can holler online, but not spending or showing up sends more of a message that they want something different, something better. That's how business works and the Cardinals are first and foremost a business.
Here's Ethan Erickson's latest number crunching on the Cardinals' attendance trends, in case you missed it.
And From Dennis, via email . . .
Q: The Athletic Among the questions was which team players would most like to play with. The Cardinals did not make the list of the top-15 or so. Does this get the attention of the Cardinals' front office?
BF: It should probably get the attention of ownership more than anything, right? The Reds were picked ahead of the Redbirds despite one postseason appearance, and that was a wild-card series loss in 2020, since 2014. The sinking Marlins were picked. So were the spending-allergic Rays. Some things to remember: Location, location, location. A lot of guys like to play in big, thriving cities. A lot of guys like to play on the coast. ºüÀêÊÓƵ can't check either of those boxes. When Giancarlo Stanton once asked the Cardinals about high-rise living options in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, the Cardinals had no good answer. That's not their fault. It is what it is. But what STL can be and what it continues to be is a great place for baseball players to raise their families. What it so often has been as well is a great place for players to raise their families while having a chance to compete at a high level and take legitimate shots at the postseason. Not so much lately. It's a bummer, because the Cardinals seemed to get a player perception bump again when Albert Pujols had his fireworks sendoff here. Then came a last-place finish and more signs of struggles. The brand isn't what it once was. It's still better than this survey indicates, I think. Sonny Gray wanted to be here. So did Willson Contreras. Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, too. Max Scherzer wanted to be here when he last was a free agent but the Cardinals didn't want to pay him. Jordan Montgomery's camp said he would have been interested in a return here but the Cardinals didn't want to pay him. Tommy Pham wanted to come back here this offseason. I still wonder what Bryce Harper might have thought if the Cardinals had made a serious play in his free agency. But the longer you go without a deep postseason run, the more a younger generation of players does not immediately connect ºüÀêÊÓƵ with a place that offers that as a character trait of its team.
And from Ralph, via email . . .Â
Q: I've watched almost every Fever game and it's not only the rough play Caitlin Clark is experiencing, it's also the horrid refereeing. She gets pummeled without calls. She is a generational talent who has not been able to show her abilities because of the absurd rough play.
µþ¹ó:ÌýI'm afraid WNBA officials have indeed become part of the story. They have developed a habit of having calls strengthened or weakened after the fact based on league reviews. That's a bad spot for the league to be in because it suggests to fans that calls in the moment (or non-calls) may not be accurate. It invites distrust. It's a shame to see the introduction of a superstar presence handled so poorly by a league that could use the increase in eyeballs, revenue and attendance. Leaving Clark off the Olympic team was one of the dumbest sports business moves I've ever observed, maybe the biggest, considering how it could have not only made the team incredibly popular, but given some of the WNBA veterans who have been so cold to her a chance to actually know her while Team USA makes its march toward another gold medal. The people who make the roster completely and absolutely blew it. I still can't quite believe it.