Lance McCullers calls out MLB for failing to market star players

Major League Baseball has been trying to find ways to offset declining attendance and television ratings for quite some time, and one star pitcher thinks he knows what the league’s biggest issue is.

In his weekly appearance on Sports 610 Radio Thursday, Houston Astros starter Lance McCullers was highly critical of MLB for being the “worst marketed league” of the major sports in America.

“We have the worst marketed league, in my opinion…of the three major sports, in the United States. I don’t know why that is. I think that the other sports leagues understand that the product that you have, the more people are interested in that product, especially, [it’s going] to sell,” McCullers said. “I think that the MLB, for a long time, has just always believed that baseball will sell because it’s baseball, and I think that it’s starting to catch up to us.”

McCullers said social media is a big tool to use for marketing players, but he admitted he has grown tired of it and there are a lot of players who don’t enjoy it. Rather than leaving it to players to build their own brands, the left-hander thinks MLB can do a lot more to help.

“The overall league needs to do a better job, like the NBA has done, in marketing its players, going on worldwide tours, taking certain players that aren’t just the two or three biggest names in sports, taking everyone,” McCullers said. “[This would let people understand] that this is what’s baseball’s about, [and would allow] everybody to get out there, versus just a certain few, and that’s something that the MLB is going to have to work on.”

The discussion of marketing MLB stars became a more polarizing one recently when commissioner Rob Manfred seemed to call out Mike Trout for not doing enough to build his brand. Trout took the high road in responding, but the remarks were surprising. McCullers seems to think Manfred should look in the mirror before calling upon guys like Trout to do more.