ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - The St. Louis Cardinals were one of only six MLB teams to reach the 2,000,000 fan threshold during the 2022 season. But the team also dropped to its lowest finish in the attendance ranking since 2012.
The Cardinals announced a full-season attendance of 2,102,530 after Sunday's final game of the regular season – which was the largest crowd of the season at Busch Stadium (46,525).
With 80 home games, St. Louis had an average crowd of 26,282. Which was good for fourth-best in all of baseball – behind only the Dodgers (34,625), Braves (29,490) and Padres (27,061). That's the lowest ranking for St. Louis since 2012, when the team finished sixth. St. Louis has ranked No. 2 in average attendance in five of the past nine seasons, trailing only the Dodgers each time.
St. Louis began the season allowing just 30% capacity crowds, then bumped it up to 60% on May 21, due to pandemic restrictions. On June 14, the team was allowed to again hold full-capacity crowds, but it wasn't until mid-July that St. Louis started seeing typical crowds of at least 40,000 or more fans.
It wasn't just the pandemic that may have kept fans away, as the on-field product was lacking in mid-summer. St. Louis had a below 1% chance to make the playoffs in early August, the offense was statistically one of the worst in baseball in June and they were in fourth place in the NL Central in July.
But a franchise-record 17-game winning streak, the return of Albert Pujols and a season-long celebration of the Voice of the Cardinals Mike Shannon help save the season.
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