Where Does Your MLB Team Rank on Twitter?
Five years ago, I had a pretty simple idea for a story: I searched the web for the number of followers that each team in MLB had on Twitter.
I wrote the story and had it published online, and the the Chicago Sun-Times picked it up for their print edition. For a kid who grew up delivering newspapers every day for years on end, it’s always fun to see my words and ideas in print. Nothing else compares to it, really.
The original story I wrote had the exact number of Twitter followers for all 30 teams in MLB, but the Sun-Times only provided figures for the top 5, the bottom 5, and the two Chicago teams.
I’d love to write a story about the five-year trend lines for these teams, but would rather put all 30 teams into the mix. Perhaps I recorded that data somewhere in the recesses of my hard drive, and if so that will be an upcoming story to tell. But for now, looking at the 2018 figures (as of midnight on April 13) for Major League Baseball and each of its teams is fascinating in its own right.
In presenting this data to the readers, it occurs to me that baseball’s standings are an effective way of measuring your own team against its immediate competition. The other four teams in your own team’s division are the daily reality over the course of the regular season, and then the playoffs are another matter, altogether.
Firstly, @mlb itself has 8,321,706 followers. That might seem like a lot, but it’s a far cry from the NFL (24.6 million) and the NBA (27.6 million). However, at least it’s more than the Los Angeles Lakers’ 7.43 million, so that’s something.
Now, let’s take a look at the different divisions in order, shall we?
#1 AL East
The dominant division on Twitter is the American League East, by far. At just under nine million total followers (8,937,789 to be exact), the East has over three million more than the next closest division. It also boasts three of the top five teams in all of baseball, led by the Yankees at 3.3 million followers, which is nearly a million more than the next team after them. In a world that quantifies things as much as possible, there is no doubt that the East is the beast.
@yankees 3,353,173
@bluejays 2,251,196
@redsox 2,011,311
@orioles 783,896
@raysbaseball 538,213
And in case you’re wondering, the name @rays belongs to a some guy named Ray who has fewer than 1,500 followers. These are sad times for Tampa Bay, I suppose.
#2 NL Central
The second-place division (or as Jerry Seinfeld would call it: the first loser) is the National League Central with nearly 5.8 million combined followers. It’s worth pointing out that the division has only two teams with over a million followers (while four of the six divisions of MLB have three teams with more than one million followers, no division has four such teams). The Cubs are also the top team in the National League.
@cubs 2,492,864
@cardinals 1,187,209
@reds 825,434
@pirates 733,809
@brewers 548,548
#3 NL West
The NL West comes in third with roughly 5.3 million followers between its five teams. The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants are both in the top seven teams in all of MLB in terms of followers, but the Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres are also among the lowest three teams in the game.
@dodgers 2,057,068
@sfgiants 1,810,163
@dbacks 574,045
@rockies 524,373
@padres 381,872
#4 NL East
The NL East doesn’t have the same numbers as its AL counterpart and they come in at number four of MLB’s six divisions with a collective 5.1 million followers. The division leader is the Philadelphia Phillies, who are number six among all teams in the Majors. At the other end of the spectrum is the Miami Marlins, who come in last among all of MLB’s 30 teams. Good luck with building something there, Derek Jeter.
@phillies 1,834,508
@braves 1,222,783
@mets 1,020,990
@nationals 697,448
@marlins 326,764
#5 AL Central
The AL Central comes in at fifth place with just a hair over 5 million followers, for an average of about a million followers per team. The Detroit Tigers are number eight in terms of Twitter followers and none of the division’s teams are among MLB’s bottom five.
@tigers 1,457,470
@royals 1,047,000
@indians 1,003,269
@whitesox 913,172
@twins 603,732
#6 AL West
Bringing up the rear is the AL West with a total of 4.9 million followers. The division’s two Texas teams are in the top 10 overall (the Texas Rangers are number 9, and the Houston Astros are number 10), but two other teams are in the bottom five (the Seattle Mariners and Oakland A’s are numbers 26 and 27, respectively).
@rangers 1,430,626
@astros 1,366,844
@angels 1,043,722
@mariners 537,060
@athletics 536,276
For those who don’t want to add up all the numbers, the American League has a comfortable margin of over 2.5 million followers more than the National League – roughly 18.9 million to 16.3 million. All 30 MLB teams have a combined total of 35,114,838 followers, for an average of 1.17 million per team. So, if you’re on Twitter and you don’t follow any MLB teams, this piece makes it about as easy as it could be.
Finally, a word about the combination MLB/Twitter logo appearing here. I originally wrote my online piece in 2013 for ChicagoSideSports, but the site went away and I can’t link to its content anymore. They created the hybrid logo to run with the piece, and it fit perfectly with what I was trying to do with the story, so I saved the image and put it onto my own blog.
It’s a good thing I did, too, because otherwise it would have been lost when the website went offline. I’m glad to have the opportunity to resurrect the image here. Hopefully more baseball/twitter writings will follow soon.
