Astros attendance versus other teams who can't get their crap together

Richard Justice's blog post this morning talked about the vicious cycle of baseball revenue/payroll/attendance (The economy sucks, so fans don't come to the ballpark, which hurts revenue, which hurts payroll, which hurts the standings, which hurts the attendance, because the team sucks, and so on. At least for a team with no real plan in place.) Anyhow, there is a question in the comments field from "justbob" wondering about how the Astros' attendance compares to other teams that sucked in 2009. So let's take a gander:

The Astros are 73-84 and have completed their home schedule for this season. Other NL teams under .500 include: Mets, Nationals, Brewers, Reds, Pirates, Padres, and Diamondbacks. This is organized by drop in per game attendance from 2008 to 2009.

Team	Attendance	Per Game	Diff from 08
Mets	3,055,282	39,170	-10,593
Nationals	1,793,282	22,416	-6,589
Padres	1,816,544	23,591	-6,484
D-Backs	2,509,924	26,281	-4,706
Reds	1,963,107	21,873	-3,957
Astros	2,521,076	31,124	-3,619
Brewers	3,068,908	37,499	-388
Pirates	1,609,076	19,480	-385

It's worth noting that the Reds, Padres, and Mets still have home games remaining.

The fact that the Mets moved into a smaller ballpark almost eliminates them from consideration here, as they have the sixth-best attendance in the Majors.

But note that the Astros have the third-highest total attendance and the third-lowest per game drop for the eight NL teams under .500. It's not particularly surprising that the top five teams for total attendance have already locked up playoff spots. I'm probably most surprised by the Brewers attendance from 2008 to 2009, as they made the playoffs last year, and haven't been within five games of the division lead since August 9.