Texas Rangers are one of the best teams in MLB, but their attendance suggests otherwise

Texas Rangers owner Ray Davis has now officially learned the hard way what every other owner of the franchise has before him.

You can build a new stadium. You can sign several top free agents. You can even field one of the best team’s in the sport.

For reasons that are forever subjective, the fan base remains the same size, even though we live in an ever-growing series of tollways connecting towns that comprise our neighborhood of 6.5 million.

The Rangers have the best offense in MLB, the third best pitching staff in MLB, and the second-highest winning percentage in baseball behind only the the Tampa Bay Rays.

A night out at the Rangers game is no longer a night visit to the proctologist.

The Rangers are giving their fans every reason to come out to Globe Life Mall, and somehow this team currently ranks 14th in Major League Baseball attendance.

Entering their game on Monday night against St. Louis in Arlington, the Rangers average 28,461 at home.

For Monday’s game, you could find tickets available for $15 a seat in the top section where even the bad seats aren’t that bad.

This is not awful; that would be Tampa Bay, where despite their 42-19 record the Rays rank 27th in attendance. The atmosphere at Tropicana Field is like playing a baseball game in your grandparent’s basement.

Given what the Rangers are doing, they should be a top 10 team in attendance.

This is not on the Rangers “being cheap.”

In an effort to win now, and compensate for the run of bad personnel moves the club made for six years, Davis approved the expensive shortcut route of free agency and spent nearly $1 billion on a handful of top free agents in each of the last two years.

The Rangers currently have a payroll of $195 million, ninth in MLB.

The Rangers are the biggest surprise in Major League Baseball, and going for history. The season is 1/3 way of the way complete and the Rangers are on pace to push for their first 100-win season in franchise history.

Even if they don’t reach 100, they are on pace to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

Maybe it’s the price of attending games?

Attending a Rangers game is not cheap, but far from the most expensive game in MLB. A family of four can attend a Rangers home for about $140, which includes hot dogs, sodas and parking; that puts them in the middle of attending a big league game.

It’s certainly not on the tax payers of Arlington, who can’t give sports teams their money fast enough to build new stadiums.

Arlington’s latest new stadium has all of the modern toys, including the coveted air conditioning and roof necessary to attract the modern sports fan. Or that was the sales pitch when the Rangers asked Arlington voters for more money to build the new place.

All the way back in 2019, when the Rangers played at the old place that didn’t have a roof or air conditioning, they averaged 26,333; the Rangers finished 18th in attendance that season where they finished six games under .500.

Even Major League Baseball, which is historically renowned for alienating its customers, put in rules to make the game more watchable. An MLB game in 2023 moves at a reasonable pace to ensure there is something to watch, and stimulation.

An MLB game is a good product again.

You can’t even say the root of this problem for the Rangers is that they play baseball rather than football.

The Astros rank seventh in MLB in attendance, and they play football in Houston. Not well, but the sport is just as much a part of the fabric of Houston as it is DFW.

Alas, this is where the Rangers sit in our little paradise of concrete and 24-hour road construction.

Unlike the Dallas Cowboys, who were so good for so long they built a loyal fan base that is passed down from one generation to the next, the Rangers were so bad for so long that they still chase the attendance demon.

Every single owner of this franchise has dealt with it, and now Ray Davis has learned the hard way.