Padres' attendance in first 10 home games

I saw this tweet four days ago from VP of Marketing Wayne Partello regarding the Padres attendance.

Actually the stat is that #PetcoPark is currently #7 in MLB attendance. #EvenMoreThanksToOurFans

— Wayne Partello (@WaynePartello) April 14, 2014

I suspected that the Padres were so high on the list because they had had more home games than other teams and also played opponents with larger fan bases, namely the Dodgers and the Tigers.  But are attendance numbers really up?

Now that the Padres have played 10 home games I thought I'd compare their attendance to other Padres' seasons.  I totaled the attendance for the first 10 home games of each season.  Baseball-reference doesn't have the attendance data for some games in the 1970s so in that case I grabbed the first 10 games with attendance, so as not to throw off the numbers too much.  I'm leaving out the average attendance column because it's easy enough to divide by 10.

Keep in mind that the maximum capacity changed over time at San Diego/Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium and the Padres played in Petco Park starting in 2004.  The first year in Petco has the highest attendance, due to all the excitement of the new ballpark.  Surprisingly 2014 doesn't seem to be off to that great of a start.  It falls behind the 2011, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2007, 2005 and 2004 seasons at Petco Park.  So far we're only ahead of 2010, 2012 and 2013.

Attendance for first 10 Padres home games