We’re all too familiar with the Orioles’ difficulties over a certain fifteen year period. While recent on-field successes have helped raise spirits in Baltimore, the sting of the late 1990s and 2000s still hurts across Birdland. It does however, make for some interesting data.
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Recently Nate Silver posted an article on his new site, FiveThirtyEight, that explored MLB team popularity relative to market size. Now Silver himself would caveat many of the assumptions in the post, especially since it was posted in their DataLab which is intended for quick analyses of interesting topics. If you’re inclined you can read about the difference between a FiveThirtyEight feature and a DataLab post here.
There was one notion that Silver used in his blog entry that struck me as interesting. He used Google searches as a proxy for popularity, which isn’t the most ideal metric by which to measure popularity. It is however interesting, and also readily available, which prompted me to look into the Orioles on Google Trends.
Below is the one image, from Google Trends, that quickly describes the past 10 years of Oriole fandom:
Now, I’ll give some clarity to the data being displayed here, before diving into hard numbers. The first point to note is that given the nature of the MLB season, searches for Baltimore Orioles are no doubt going to be cyclical. Some teams (like one of the most searched: Boston Red Sox) are going to have a little bit less of a cyclical nature, but we’ll discuss that later.
The second point to note is that all data is relative to the time period with the highest search volume. For the Orioles, that came in April 2004, when the team entered the season primed for improvement. Maybe they were a class below the eventual champion Red Sox and Yankees (who PECOTA projected to win 106 games each!) but their lineup featuring Lopez, Palmeiro, Tejada, Roberts, etc. was impressive and looked competitive. It was also nice to see the team spending again after a run in the mid-late 90s. So April 2004 shows on the graph with a score of 100, the highest relative search volume. All other months/years are scaled based on that.
Finally its worth noting that Google Trends includes similar search terms. So when we look at “Baltimore Orioles” we’re also getting related terms. What those might be, Google won’t say. Just know that it’s not only searches for this specific term that count.
2004
So without further ado let’s jump in to the graph. By May of 2004 the team hovered around .500, interest from the fanbase waning a bit. Then they fell off the map in June and plummeted to last in the division. The team would bounce back a bit but stayed more than 20 games behind the Yanks and Sox for the rest of the season. As such, search volume in August 2004 was less than half of what it was around opening day. By October it was 10%.
2005
Fans thought the team could rebound! Interest in April was 81% of where it was to start the ’04 season. The team though didn’t perform once again and hovered around .500 through July with hopes still high. July 2005 search volume received a score of 68, just 3 points behind the previous year. August saw the team tumble in the standings and search volume did the same with scores of 40, 28, and 12 for August through September.
2006
Hope springs eternal on opening day! Except O’s fans only seemed to be half as hopeful as they were just two seasons ago. In April 2006 search terms around “Baltimore Orioles” scored only a 58, and by August they were half of that. In October, a familiar low of just 7% of the search volume compared to April 2004.
2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
A pattern emerges as each of these seasons sees search volume start in April between 35 and 48, but drop off from there. Through 2009 search volume manages to stay in the 30s through the late summer, but Fall ultimately causes it to fall down into the single digits. 2010 and 2011 though show the pain of a decade of futility with search volume dropping off continually from opening day on. After opening day it never again reaches the 30s before hitting single digits in October each season.
2012
The 2012 season is the “disbelief season” and frankly one of the most fun times to be a true Orioles fan who stuck with the team. Search volume started low in April (39) but picked up a bit in May to about 44% of what it was way back in 2004. At this point, May 30th, the Orioles were tied atop the division with Tampa Bay! June and July saw searches drop off though, ending with a score of 30 in July. O’s fans had seen this before. The team fell back 5 games behind the Yankees by the end of June, and 5.5 games back by July 31st.
Search volume though saw a slight uptick in August. Fans expected the team to crater, but instead they had pulled within two games of the dreaded Yankees. In September search volume peaks at 58, the highest it had been in over 6 years. That coincided with the O’s tying the Yankees atop the division and looking like a threat to make the playoffs. If not through the division, perhaps the wild card(s)!
The birds did in fact make the playoffs, and even beat the Rangers in the Wild Card play-in game. They moved on to face the Yankees in the ALDS, eventually losing after a hard fought series. Search volume hovered in the mid 50s for October. Then, just as quickly as it rose pre-opening day, interest dropped off, falling from 54 to 7 from October to November. O’s fans had never gone from playing relevant baseball to the offseason so quickly, and the search volume shows their disappointment in not advancing further in the playoffs.
2013
Last season was clearly a fluke fans told themselves. Interest in Opening Day 2013 was about what it was the previous season. The difference being that in 2012 the team was coming off of 15 years of futility, whereas the 2013 squad was fresh off a playoff run. Still, fans weren’t convinced. The AL East in 2013 was highly competitive and the O’s stayed above .500 through the end of June with search volume hovering around the high 30s and low 40s. By the end of July the team was 5 games behind Tampa Bay for second in the division, and it seemed that their hopes of playing meaningful games in October had fallen dramatically. Be the end of August they fell to fourth in the division despite being 8 games over .500. Search volume dropped accordingly going from 41 in July to 34 in August and 25 in September. The season ended on September 30th with the O’s finishing over .500 but several games out of the wild card race. Search volume sat in the single digits from October through January.
2014
Hope springs eternal. This team reminds people of the 2004 squad that saw an influx of talent to make a run at the postseason. The New York Times claims the O’s are “Wired for Winning”. Search volume for April is already at 55% of what it was back in 2004. After two strong winning seasons, a playoff run, and offseason additions, O’s fans are finally buying in it seems.With a strong start search volume could easily eclipse every post-2004 season.
Hope springs eternal.
Jeff was the owner of the Orioles blog Warehouse Worthy, which focused on making advanced statistics a part of the conversation for the average fan. Outside of baseball, Jeff is a graduate of Loyola University where he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Business Administration. The Maryland native currently works for an Advertising Agency in downtown Baltimore. Previously a contributor to Beyond the Boxscore, he joined Baseball Prospectus in September 2014. You can reach him at jeff.long@baltimoresportsandlife.com.