Marlins attendance even lower than usual through first 10 home games

Two weeks into the regular season, the Miami Marlins find themselves in an unfamiliar spot: tied atop the National League East division. Even in such a minuscule sample, it's worth acknowledging for a franchise that for the previous half-decade had a habit of instantaneously falling out of the race.

While the local fanbase can't help but feel encouraged by this 8-5 start, it is not motivating them to actually show up to loanDepot park yet. The building was mostly full for Opening Day (32,459), but hasn't even reached half of its capacity since. The Marlins rank 29th among MLB teams in average home attendance so far this season. At 11,713 fans per game, they just barely edge out the Athletics (11,503/game), who host games at a minor league ballpark.

Below, I've compared 2026 to every other "normal" season of Bruce Sherman's ownership tenure. Fans were not permitted to attend games in 2020 due to COVID restrictions, and the ballpark's capacity was limited for the first half of 2021 to allow sufficient social distancing, so those seasons have been omitted.

The last time that the Marlins got off to such a slow start attendance-wise without a pandemic to blame for it, José Ureña was still anchoring the starting rotation and Lewis Brinson was viewed as a long-term contributor.

There are some legitimate excuses to consider in this case. 

Historically, Marlins attendance has been very strongly correlated to the day of the week. The numbers skyrocket on weekends. Last season, for example, 16 of the 17 best-attended Marlins home games were on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, with the lone exception being Opening Day (which was celebrated on a Thursday).

Every season from 2022-25, Miami's first 10 home games included two full weekends. The calendar has not favored them the same way this year. The only weekend series they've hosted was March 27-29 against the Colorado Rockies, who are widely projected to be MLB's worst team. After the Rockies left town, the Marlins' next opponent was the Chicago White Sox, whose roster is similarly bereft of recognizable big leaguers.

On the other hand, the Marlins have been playing high-quality baseball since last summer. How is it that their fan turnout is so comparable to 2018-19 when they fielded some of the least-competitive teams in this stadium's history?

If any individual Marlin has the potential to move the needle in terms of attendance, it should be ace right-hander Sandy Alcantara. Conveniently, each of his first three starts coincided with home games. They failed to capitalize on the latter two—his April 1 shutout of the White Sox was the worst-attended Marlins game to date (6,505) and his April 7 encore drew the smallest crowd of the Cincinnati Reds series (8,318).

The Marlins spend the next week on the road, followed by a six-game homestand against the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals beginning on April 17.