williamnyy
Too many problems with this post to address, but the reason I clicked on the link was because I thought it was a serious look at MLB fan demographics and not a series of politically motivated one-liners. I am not interested in the latter, but it would be nice if Fangraphs, of all sites, would use a more rigorous standard when it comes to making claims like MLB doesn’t have many young fans or is a “white man’s sport”. I find myself visiting Fangraphs less and less and it transitions away from its founding, and that’s a shame.
My criticism is not so much the politicization of posts (and it’s more pervasive than one author) as much as the loosening of critical rigor. No one would accept random anecdotes as the basis for making a bold claim like Bryce Harper is better than Mike Trout, for example, so why do so for claims like MLB has no young fans or is a white man’s game? The demographics of the player population refute the later, and there are some interesting surveys floating around that suggest MLB is doing OK with millennials (https://tinyurl.com/y7gcqsn3). Also, baseball/softball participation at youth levels are on the rise. Sure, MLB’s TV audience skews old, but national TV audiences are not a good way to judge MLB’s popularity, both overall and in terms of demographics. As much as I would prefer FG avoid the injection of politics into the site, what is increasingly keeping me away is the less analytical rigor being applied.