MLB lacks recognizable superstars

Americans are stupid. We know.

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Americans are stupid. We know.

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Stupid for acknowledging that MLB doesn't promote their star players enough?

Baseball fans root for teams, not players. This is a problem for espn since they only like to cover what the "stars" are posting on twitter

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MLB doesn't promote their star players enough

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As a huge baseball fan, this is true. And the MLB has many stars, especially young stars. Trout, Harper, Bryant, Betts, Lindor, Seagar, Machado, Arenado, Altuve. Most of these guys 25 & younger.

ETA: Gotta add Yelich & Correa too, and no doubt I'm missing some more 25 & younger talent.

People care about their baseball teams.

Unlike other sports were the casual fan knows more about the entire league.

This isn't rocket science - yet every year we here about world series tv ratings while paying no attention to the millions of people coming through the gates at most MLB ballparks.

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We begin with a fact from the same polling data: Nearly one in four people who consider themselves "avid" NBA fans (23 percent) say LeBron James is their favorite player. That is how you define the face of your sport. Now contrast that with baseball -- in which no one even remotely approaches the star power of a LeBron. There isn't a single player in the sport who ranks as the favorite of even 3 percent of all "avid" baseball fans. At the top of that list is the Cubs' Kris Bryant at 2.9 percent. For comparison, in the NFL, Brady checks in at 9.3 percent.

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It is pretty easy to see that playing on big stages matter the most to casual sports fans. If the Cubs become a dynasty people will get tired of seeing Bryant and Rizzo.

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There was Derek Jeter, at No. 13. He hasn't played a game in 2½ years. Next came Babe Ruth, at No. 30. He's the only name on the list -- in any sport -- who hasn't appeared in a game for more than eight decades. And finally, you get to Pete Rose, at No. 50.

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Who the hell did they poll? The guys at you local VFW Hall?


Young guys like Bryant, Harper, Trout, Kershaw, etc are highly recognizable and popular

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Baseball is the fastest growing sport in the world. The only one that can actually add expansion teams. I'd say their strategy of promoting the game vs individual players is working well.

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There is always room for improvement and this area is the main one I think

Mike Trout is off to a legendary start in his career, in a huge media market, and all I can think of for him is a Subway commercial.
Which baseball player has reached a point where they don't have to put their name in the commercial as an identifier?

I was going to say something like this in the "MLB has its act together" thread yesterday.

They do a piss poor job of marketing guys like Harper, Trout and Bryant, especially Trout. For as great as he is no one knows who he is outside of sports fans.