Photo by afagen.

There’s been quite a bit of chatter today about last night’s Nationals crowd, a paltry group of 10,999 that was the lowest attendance recorded at a Nationals home game since they relocated to Washington in 2005. Considering that number, it’d be easy to simply take an alarmist stance. But let’s look at some facts. The Nationals aren’t competitive. They were playing Houston, who is also not very competitive. It was a Monday night in September. There was no promotion happening at the stadium. So, yeah, if there was going to be a night where a record low attendance was going to happen, it was probably going to be last night.

Looking at the numbers shows that while the team is certainly struggling to bring in fans, they shouldn’t be in panic mode quite yet. With nine home games left in the season at Nationals Park, the team have drawn a per game average of 22,998 fans. Even if we make the ridiculous assumption that the Nationals manage to do worse than last night every game the rest of the way and draw but 10,000 fans to each of their last nine games — with a series against the Phillies at the end of the month, they will certainly draw more than that, but still — the per game average for the full season would drop to 21,571. (For context: the lowest current average in the majors at this moment is Cleveland, who are only drawing 17,418 fans per game to Jacobs Progressive Field.)

Would that be disappointing, troubling and the lowest per game average since the team moved to Washington? Sure. But is it Expos-esque? Hardly — there’s a long way to go before we start talking about that level of fan apathy. Of course, considering that 2011’s Nationals home slate will lack the numerical boost Stephen Strasburg brings, next year’s attendance should be interesting to watch.

Of course, the team could start winning on a more consistent basis — that would probably help reverse the attendance decline, too.