Baseball is doing well in terms of attendance and team profits. One possible reason is that the product is interesting. One possible reason for the product being interesting is that baseball management now features a fruitful competition between a scouting/tools/traditional knowledge perspective and a Bill James/Baseball Prospectus/Moneyball/stathead perspective, which uses analytical techniques to try to identify players and strategies undervalued by traditional knowledge. Instead of teams succumbing to the errors of majoritarianism--"let's sign the guy who will be popular with fans"--or elitism--"let's sign the guy old Joe likes"--you have stathead values and scouting values sharpening the other up and cutting across the preferences of the majority and the inner circle.
