Is The New Breed of Baseball Fan Shallow? Or Has it Always Been This Way?

Baseball has evolved constantly since its inception, and the baseball fan has no choice but to adapt to the game’s evolution. The equipment has developed over the many decades. There have been many rule changes, some as recently as within the last two seasons. Social media has provided us with ways to connect with other fans, and sometimes provided a sense of invulnerability to those who wish to voice opinions which may not be universally accepted. Has the combination of these factors brought forth a new breed of fan, one who expresses displeasure with his team or certain players with impunity and takes to his social media accounts with his knee-jerk reactions? Or has this fan always been part of the game, only recently given the ability to make his presence known? I suppose the answer to that question is open to interpretation. In my humble opinion, while the game itself is trending in a positive direction, the newfound fan interest combined with having public forums at our fingertips adds an element that I find less desirable.

Every team in Major League Baseball has at least one social media page. The league itself even has its own outlets. It’s a great way to keep up with the sport and your favorite team; my hats off to the individuals who manage those social media accounts, it’s a full-time job for sure. It’s also a great way for people to make their opinions known, no matter how outlandish they may be. Social media has also become an outlet for armchair general managers to let everyone know who needs to go and who needs to stay. For a baseball purist such as myself, this can be a frustrating yet necessary evil; necessary because it allows fans to connect with each other. For that, it seems we must endure the occasional armchair GM or sometimes just a regular troll. Either way, these people seem to have the delusion of being able to manage a team better than the guy who gets paid to do it, and with the advent and expansion of social media, they aren’t afraid to voice their opinions. Especially since they can do so with relative impunity.

Case and point, I saw a post highlighting Christian Yelich and his recent run at the plate. I couldn’t help but laugh when I read the praise in the comment section. I’d praise someone too if they were slashing .284/.378/.456 with 11 bombs, 46 RBI, and 21 steals at the break. Fangraphs currently has him ranked 5th in the Majors at his position based on standard stat values. As I was researching for this article, I was immediately taken back to the spring, a time at which the sentiment in the comment section in a post such as the one I was reading would have been starkly different. Though I don't agree with some of the knee-jerk responses to a player or team's struggles, I suppose I can relate to the frustration. After all, Milwaukee isn't the only team that has dealt with a high-dollar free agent signing–or in Milwaukee’s case, a high-profile trade piece going through struggles.

Early in the season, the name Marcell Ozuna was synonymous with struggles at the plate. So much so that fans were calling for the Braves organization to eat the rest of his contract and send him on his way. He is out of options, so they couldn’t simply send him to Gwinnett without risking the waiver wire. Some fans went so far as to boo him during home games. But as long-time baseball fans know well, player production often goes in cycles, much the same as team production as a whole. That in mind, let’s take a brief look at a single series in Miami at the beginning of May, a series in which the Marlins were swept by their former teammate Marcell Ozuna and the visiting Braves. During this series, Ozuna came to the plate 15 times total, slashing .462/1.153/.533 with 6 hits, 3 of them homers, and scoring six runs in 13 official at-bats. Small sample size? Maybe. But that 3-game trip to Miami seemed to be a turning point for Ozuna, who as of the All Star break holds a season slash line of .250/.323/.477. Not normal DH numbers, that I grant you. But when you consider the abysmal start he had, I’d like to think he’s recovered well. Fangraphs has him ranked 11th in the Majors at his position based on standard stat values. Is he the player the Braves signed in 2020? Not hardly, at least not yet. Am I biased? Perhaps a little. But I think there’s plenty of room for improvement given the chance, and he’s got an entire half of baseball to do it. I’m just a fan like everyone else. I’m just the type of fan who likes to express his opinions in writing.

The whole point of the rambling that this has turned into is that we as fans can be a bit reactionary when it comes to our favorite team's success, or lack thereof. It's very easy to point out a struggling player or group of players and say the team is better off if they aren't there, whether that means releasing them outright, making some sort of trade, or sending them to the minors to work on whatever we think the problem is. Granted, these players are paid a lot of money to play the game of baseball, and the front office folks are paid a lot of money to put the best possible team on the field. But what we need to realize is, while they are paid to play the game, they are also human beings, and as such are prone to mistakes, prone to struggles at times. It's not fair to them for people sitting in front of their TV or radio to demand perfection. Many of these men have families, people that want to see them succeed playing the game they love. As fans, we owe it to these players and their families to support them no matter what their stat lines are. That's why we're fans. We have to remember that the men on those fields love this game just as much, if not more than we do. There are times where a team will have to part ways with a player. The point is, however, we as fans don't get to decide when that time comes to pass.

I put a lot of stats and numbers into this article. In reality, those numbers are just secondary statistics when compared to the message I intend to convey. I mentioned in a previous post the idea that evolution is part of the game. As the game grows, so does the fan who watches it. Social media isn’t going anywhere. With it, there will always be fans that will be extremely open with their opinions, no matter how far out they may be. But there are opportunities for meaningful conversations between fans, no matter where they are in the world. As we get set to begin the second half this evening at the time of this writing, I wish a good second half to all teams and fans out there. Thanks for taking the time to read as always.