{"id":775,"date":"2015-04-21T19:35:30","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T02:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/?p=775"},"modified":"2015-11-15T16:30:13","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T23:30:13","slug":"is-bingo-small-for-a-aa-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/?p=775","title":{"rendered":"Is Bingo Small for a AA Franchise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently a Binghamton Mets fan commented that AA is a high level of ball for a community the size of Binghamton. Is that true? Let’s take a look at the populations of the metro areas in the Eastern League<\/a>. The whole metro-area thing is not an exact science, but I think most of the EL cities are reasonably represented. I used a list on Wikipedia<\/a> that has 2012 population figures. New Hampshire is represented by Manchester, and New Britain is represented by Hartford. The only real choice for Bowie is Washington. Bowie is a bit of an anomaly in the Eastern League, as it’s the only location that very close to an MLB city. The metro-area populations are shown in the chart below. Bowie is not included, because Washington’s nine million population is off the charts.<\/p>\n

\"el_pop\"<\/a><\/p>\n



\nI’m surprised that New Britain\/Hartford is the largest (apart from Bowie\/DC). Anyway, the fan was correct: only Altoona has a lower population than Binghamton. I’ve been to Altoona, and not only is it fairly small, but it’s also pretty isolated. I can’t imagine that many people make the trek from Pittsburgh or State College. It’s a fairly new site for organized baseball (1999), and their attendance is relatively strong. Well done, Altoona!<\/p>\n

Speaking of attendance, the average EL 2014 home attendance is shown in the chart below.<\/p>\n

\"el_att\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Binghamton’s place in the cellar may play a large role in the possible demise of the franchise, but it’s been fun while it’s lasted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently a Binghamton Mets fan commented that AA is a high level of ball for a community the size of Binghamton. Is that true? Let’s take a look at the populations of the metro areas in the Eastern League. The whole metro-area thing is not an exact science, but I think most of the EL … Continue reading Is Bingo Small for a AA Franchise?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":792,"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions\/792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}