Issue 9: On The Road & In The Press Box
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March has been a busy month of baseball travel for me.
I was able to see Nick Kurtz earlier in the month before he was sidelined with a shoulder injury earlier when Wake Forest played Duke. Last weekend I went down to Baton Rouge to a watch a great LSU-Florida series.
A few years ago the difference in crowd environment at those two ballparks would be huge, but Wake has done an excellent job growing the program in recent years and the fanbase has responded in kind. Even with poor weather in Winston Salem the environment was excited and buzzy, which has become the status quo and the expectation when you take in a game at Alex Box Stadium to see the Tigers.
Here’s the official attendance for each of the three games I was at:
Friday: 11,648
Saturday: 12,892
Sunday: 12,539
The stadium capacity for LSU is 10,326 and so far this season the team is averaging 10,797 fans per game (in 2023 they averaged 11,188). That’s crazy. Just two programs—LSU and Mississippi State—are averaging more than 10,000 fans per game so far this season.
Here’s the top 10 in average attendance with data counted through March 26 games:
LSU — 10,797
Mississippi State — 10,404
Arkansas — 9,679
Ole Miss — 9,361
Texas* — 7,470
South Carolina — 7,004
Florida — 6,103
Texas A&M — 5,713
Southern Miss* — 5,300
Tennessee — 4,956
*Teams not in the SEC
Non SEC fans probably get annoyed when we constantly talk about how different the conference is for baseball, but there’s plenty of truth to it. It’s true with the fan engagement. It’s true with the talent. On our current Top 25, 12 teams hail from the SEC including seven of the top 10. Nine of the top 30 players on our draft rankings attend an SEC school.
All of this is building to the an extremely inconsequential first world problem I had to deal with when I went down to Baton Rouge: I had to (gasp) watch the games from the press box!
I know, I know. The horror.
When I first started writing about baseball in a capacity beyond blogging from my parents’ house as a high schooler I was thrilled to get into the press box and cover games from there. It felt so official. I wasn’t faking it any more. I was a real writer with a real press pass and real free food1 at my disposal.
That was the case throughout my years at UNC when I covered the baseball team for The Daily Tar Heel, our student newspaper, and it was also the case for two summers when I got to cover the Braves and Padres as part of an internship with MLB.com.
When I started covering the draft for Baseball America back in 2017 the press box quickly lost its allure. I wanted to be down closer to the field and behind the plate where you could better see pitch shapes and have a more clear idea of the physicality of players and—if you’re lucky—strike up a conversation with a scout you had seen around but hadn’t actually met yet.
The norm for me at this point is to go to games and sit behind the dish in the scout’s section. I can better describe what’s happening on the field and it’s a good spot to get video of pitchers and bounce to either open side for hitters as well. That’s not at all a problem for most high school events I attend because the only people there are scouts, a few media members and some parents—who almost always sit on either the third base or first base line.
It’s also been easy enough for me to find a nice spot behind the dish at most ACC schools (though Wake is getting dicey lately) to take in a game. That’s not the case for LSU though and I was worried about it enough last year that I just bought a ticket behind the dish to get a prime look at a highly-anticipated Paul Skenes-Chase Dollander matchup.
This year the two most prominent names to see where Jac Caglianone and Tommy White—both hitters, well, at least primarily hitters in Jac’s case—so I wasn’t as worried about it. Which left me sitting in the press box for a full college series for the first time in years.
I joked about this being some tragedy but I certainly don’t actually think that. I’ll always be excited to take in a game no matter where the view comes from. It’s just funny to think about a place that I once aspired to be in regularly is now a nice backup option if the crowd is too large.
And the raucous crowds you get from a fully packed college stadium is worth the cost, for sure. It’s just such a fun experience that I hope each of you get to enjoy at some point. It’s different from a packed MLB game. It’s more intimate. Not necessarily better or worse. Just a different experience.
There’s been plenty of draft content over at BA since my last newsletter. I wrote up notes on a loaded Wake Forest-Duke series, looked into 10 risers and helium players in the class and also wrote our first in-season mock draft of the year. After the mock draft dropped we updated our draft board for the first time in-season and expanded to the top 300 players in the class.
What became clear after this update is just how weak the high school class of players is this year. It’s potentially one of the weakest ever and I had a number of scouts tell me it’s the worst prep class they have ever scouted. It’s shaping up to be an extremely college-heavy draft at the top, so keep up with our college hot sheets throughout the year to track all the top college performers.
My most recent piece was a notebook full of college draft prospects from the LSU-Florida series I went to headlined by Jac Caglianone, Tommy White and Luke Holman—who has been excellent.
On the podcasting side of things Peter and I broke down the volatility of the draft class and also talked through our top 300 draft update. More recently, Peter and I talked about a few intriguing round two risers and Ben and I returned to the Future Projection podcast to talk opening day and all sorts of other things on the amateur side.
Hope you all had a great MLB Opening Day!
Here are a few other stories you might find interesting:
Aroldis Chapman’s Arm Stands Alone — JJ Cooper looks into just how electric, and durable, Aroldis Chapman truly is. I didn’t realize the extent of his 100-mph fastball streak.
College Baseball What To Watch For: Week 7 — Peter Flaherty’s looks ahead for each weekend of college baseball are always informative and for anyone looking to get into the game it’s a great primer each and every week.
Here Are The Potential PPI-Eligible Players Who Made Opening Day Rosters — Matt Eddy gives us the full list of players who have a chance to net their teams extra draft picks this year. A great resource for draftniks.
Spring Training Intel On 12 Phillies, Blue Jays And Rays Prospects — Back field notes from Geoff Pontes at spring training. There are lots of big names you’ll be familiar with here but a sleeper Geoff mentions is Blue Jays RHP Carson Pence who was a 2023 UDFA but has fun traits on his changeup.
There is this incredible tendency for veteran baseball writers to complain about press box food if the spread isn’t up to their standards. I’m not exactly a “foodie” and generally am happy to eat whatever, but I can’t imagine whining about free food in a press box while covering a baseball game.