The Launch Angle

Last Saturday, I met a friend downtown a block or two from Daikin Park for some coffee. An Astros fan, he was visiting from out of town and was catching the game with his family. August is a particularly rough month to visit Houston. 100 degrees with no cloud cover, but you can try to avoid being outside. Daikin Park is indoors after all, and sponsored by an air conditioning company.

The problem is that he was planning to hang outside the gates for 45 minutes before they opened. Why? Because the first 10,000 fans to Daikin Park would get this Yordan Alvarez bobblehead.

That is a very cool looking bobblehead. At least, it looks great in this image from the Astros social media team. Sometimes, the picture they show and what you get don’t always line up. Sometimes you get the bobblehead, look at it and think “This is supposed to be George Springer? Have they ever seen George Springer?”

Hopefully, my friend and his family found a place in line in the shade by the left field gates. For this bobblehead, I don’t blame him. I’d stand for an hour in 100 degree heat for this work of art.

Why should we have to though? Why are there only 10,000 of these? Can’t the Astros make more? Why do they feel that every other home game needs to be a recreation of a Walmart on Black Friday?

I’ve gone to a Padres game at Petco well after gates open and gotten that day’s giveaway. I’ve arrived at Dodger Stadium after the first pitch (“when in Rome”), and still been handed a Corey Seager 2016 Rookie of the Year bobblehead. Other teams aren’t so stingy, why are the Astros?

I’m never going to win this fight, but it bugs me. In the 100 loss years, it wasn’t that hard to be one of the first 10,000 fans, but it’s more difficult now. It’s extra tough if you have kids, to commit an extra 2 to 3 hours at the ballpark so you can get the giveaway. By the time the 3rd inning comes around you’ve been at the ballpark for 3 and a half hours already, and if they’re really little, that might be all they can take.

Even arriving at gates open isn’t a guarantee you’ll get the giveaway. There’s countless stories of people not getting one despite being there at gates open. Or the worst scenario, where you’re there at gates open, but you picked the wrong gate, and your gate runs out of the item even though the other gates haven’t, so you try to walk over to another gate once you’re already in, but they won’t give you one because you’re not approaching from the correct side.

I realize they’re just dumb, generally low quality, trinkets or items. The free jerseys are paper thin and almost never fit anyone. The bobbleheads are nice but usually they end up sitting somewhere still in their box when I get them home. Other items seem like they’d be dollar store material if they didn’t have the Astros logo on them. I just wish there weren’t hoops to jump through. We bought a ticket, isn’t that enough?

The idea is that the limited supply encourages fans to come early and if they’re there early they might spend more in the stores and concessions in the stadium, but the limited supply also negates some of the intended promotion. I’m more incentivized to buy a ticket to a game, if I’m definitely going to get the giveaway than if I’m only getting the chance to get the giveaway. And when someone buys a ticket for the promise of the giveaway only to end up empty-handed, well all you’ve created is a dissatisfied customer.

Just give out more.

I became curious if the Astros really were on the stingier side or if what they were doing was just standard, so I looked at what other teams were doing with their giveaways. Here’s how many fans (typically) get the stadium giveaways at other ballparks.

Limiting it to the first 10,000 fans is on the lower side, but it looks like a number of other MLB teams also use the 10,000 fan threshold. 10,000 is still in the bottom third of MLB for supply limit though.

Some teams like the Mariners, Cardinals and White Sox had numbers that varied more from promotion to promotion. The Padres and Dodgers give out 40,000, which is basically every ticketed fan, which explains my experience. Philly doesn’t even state a number, they just assure you “all fans” will get one. The Athletics also don’t state a number, but from what I could find, it wasn’t because “all fans” got one. They just are allergic to transparency, and simply say “early arriving fans”. New York is weird; both the Mets and Yankees draw the line at 18,000 fans. I’m not sure how they came up with that number. At the back of the pack are the Red Sox, whose 7,500 limit is the lowest in the majors.

I will say that in reviewing every team’s promotions calendar, the Astros do seem to have more giveaway nights than other teams. Some teams like the Twins and Tigers barely had any.

The other thing I noticed was how prevalent “special ticket” giveaways were becoming across MLB. These are the promotion nights where it’s not about just being one of the first 10,000 fans. You need to buy a special ticket add-on to get the item of the night. In which case, I feel like it’s not really a “giveaway”, because you’re buying the item. The Astros have these too, but their ratio of special ticket add-ons to true giveaways isn’t as bad as a lot of other teams’.

Today is Tatsuya Imai bobblehead day, which I’m sure will be less popular than last week’s Yordan bobblehead day. They plan these way in advance, and I’m sure just like us, the promotions department wasn’t expecting for Imai to be a mop-up duty relief pitcher for the team in August. He’s heavily featured on the outside of Daikin Park.

If you want one though, head to the park early, and bring a wide brimmed hat. It’s going to be 99 degrees at gates open again, and these things are in short supply. Even if they don’t have to be.

Athletics @ Astros Game Information and Gamethread Details

Hunter Brown starts for the Astros tonight. In his last start against the Mariners, he limited the opposition to just 2 earned runs, but it wasn’t a great outing, as he walked 5 batters, ramping up his pitch count quickly such that he could only go 5 innings. He has a 3.67 ERA on the season with a 1.30 WHIP and 9.4 K/9. Unfortunately he also has a 5.2 BB/9 which 2 higher than his career worst of 3.2.

Hopefully he can use a weakened A’s lineup to “get right”. This isn’t the same lineup the A’s had earlier in the season. Jacob Wilson, Shea Langeliers, and Nick Kurtz have all been lost to season-ending injuries.

For the A’s, left hander Jacob Lopez takes the mound. Lopez has a 5.22 ERA on the season and 1.53 WHIP, but he’s pitched well in recent starts.

Lopez was sent down to AAA at the end of May after his season ERA ballooned up to 7.04, but since he was called back up in early July, he’s had a 3.13 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, a 10.4 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9. He’s now had 7 starts in a row where he’s allowed 2 earned runs or fewer.

The game will be broadcast at 6:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.

This post will be updated with starting lineup as they are made available.

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Feature photo from  @astros on X,  Source Link.