What caused the drop depends on who you listen to. Unusually cold weather is surely one culprit, and escalating ticket prices are likely another. Teams tanking before the season even began might also be an issue, with fans unwilling to spend money to watch bad baseball.
Baseball has changed, and not for the better. Games last forever, pitchers don’t last at all and everything is run from spreadsheets. Meanwhile, the sacrifice bunt is almost extinct, the shift ruins the basic concept of outs and complete games are rarer than scheduled doubleheaders.
To many, the game has become little more than a glorified home run derby, where pitches throw as hard as they can, batters swing as hard as they can and the team that hits the most balls over the fence usually wins.