Guardians just proved they don't belong in the playoffs with fan attendance vs Tigers

The Guardians got home field advantage for all three of their Wild Card games against the Tigers, and Cleveland fans in attendance have certainly made themselves known in ways that have almost certainly rankled Tigers fans watching from home (yelling obscenities at umpires for calling balls on pitches well out of the zone, for one).

However, ESPN's flyover views of Progressive Field have certainly made the crowd look ... sparse, in a word. The first rows of every deck have been filled, but bodies petered out the higher you looked.

And, per Codify Baseball, Game 1 of the Tigers-Guardians Wild Card series was the lightest attended of any of the four Wild Cards. Dodger Stadium, with a total capacity around 56,000, had 50,555 fans. Yankee Stadium, totaling 46,537 seats and more standing room, had 47,027. Wrigley Field with 41,649 had 39,114 fans.

And Progressive Field — to be fair, the smallest of any major league park — had 26,186 attendees to a 34,820 capacity, making it the lowest-attended game even by percentage of available seats filled.

Guardians-Tigers in Cleveland had the lowest attendance of any Wild Card series

You might be able to point a finger at the 1:08 PM start time for Game 1, which both Tigers and Guardians fans were rightfully upset about when schedules dropped. However, Cubs fans still managed to pack Wrigley to the brim despite a 2:08 PM CST start time in Chicago.

Maybe it'll be a different story for Thursday's decisive Game 3, but shots of Cleveland's open seats is kind of satisfying for Tigers fans. In the regular season, Progressive Field had no year-over-year growth from 2024 for their season total and in fact lost fans — 2,056,264 in 2024, 2,051,360 in 2025 — while the Tigers ranked 24th in attendance last year (1,858,295) and brought in over 550,000 more fans this season (2,413,442).

If the Tigers move on to the ALDS, they'll host Game 3 and a possible Game 4 at Comerica, where hopefully Detroit will be able to show out a lot better than Guardians fans have during the Wild Card.