The Pirates’ attendance is way down this season, but that doesn’t make them unique. Attendance is down across all of Major League Baseball. It isn’t quite a crisis yet, but commissioner Rob Manfred understands it’s a problem and is trying to find ways to solve it.
From the story linked above, “league-wide attendance entering Friday of 27,328 per game is down 6.6% from this date last year and 8.6% overall, according to Stats LLC.”
That’s a lot of unsold tickets and a lot of fans not coming to games. Manfred seems to be most focused on things he can control, like the pace of play and defensive shifts (which have led to less hits and thus less action).