14 Major League Baseball Twitter Follows For 2016

It’s Opening Day—a national holiday of sorts. Twenty-three games will be played today from the afternoon until after midnight, giving you a chance to binge-watch our national pastime.

Since baseball is back, now would be a spectacular time to baseball-ify your Twitter timeline. This often requires some digging—baseball has a much smaller social media presence than does basketball or football. @MLB has just 5.5 million Twitter followers, compared to over 17 million for @NFL and over 20 million for @NBA.

Baseball often gets the reputation of being an “Old Man Sport,” and to be honest, that notion is not completely unfounded. The average World Series viewer was 53.4 years old in 2012, compared to 36.7 years old for NBA games that same year.

But with the influx of young stars like Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa, and Matt Harvey, baseball has a chance to be as cool as it was when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hitting home runs every other night.

Whether you’re a new fan or a long-time seamhead looking to beef up your timeline, here are 14 follows you can make right now that will give you more than enough MLB. All without blowing your following-to-follower ratio. Because we know you care. 

@Fangraphs is a great follow if you’re looking to learn about sabermetrics. The site includes complete player stat sheets with WAR, BABIP, ERA+ and a million other stats you probably didn’t even know existed. Their site also features comprehensive explanations of different sabermetric stats, which is great for beginners. Fangraphs is a must-follow for stat nerds.

@MLBcathedrals is a cool follow. The site offers pictures of classic stadiums like the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field in their heyday. This isn’t one of those sports photo accounts that tweets five photos and then retweets a bunch of spam either. Most of its tweets offer a stunning visual perspective into baseball’s golden age.

@MLBTradeRumors does very little original reporting, but features much more than just trade rumors. The site is quick to circulate and aggregate the breaking news of the day, analysis and obviously some trade rumors. Trade Rumors has over 500,000 followers, making it one of the largest and most active baseball-centric accounts on Twitter.

Most baseball players aren’t really interesting follows. But if you have tweeted anything about baseball within the last five years, there’s a good chance Jose Bautista is already following you.

@JoeyBats19 has just shy of 1 million followers, and is following over 691,000 people. He is one of the game’s most active tweeters—and bat-flippers.

Who doesn’t love a good GIF? @MLBGIFs has everything MLB, from highlights to humor, immortalized as GIFs.

With over half a million followers, @Cut4 is the MLB-affiliated Twitter account most tailored to millennials and social media. Its bio says it covers “Everything awesome” in the majors. This typically includes videos, GIFs, and the human side of some of baseball’s biggest stars.

@BaseballReference is the go-to site for any and all baseball stats. Their account features a variety of statistical content from “On This Day In History” to trivia questions even the biggest sports nerd couldn’t crack. Baseballreference.com is the best website for statistics—sabermetric or traditional. It features just about every stat ever accumulated in professional baseball.

The official Twitter page of Major League Baseball is filled with stats, GIFs, news, and retweets from some of baseball’s best stars. It is by far the biggest baseball page on Twitter with over 5.5 million followers.

All 30 MLB clubs have Twitter accounts. They typically aren’t the most exciting follows, but you’re kind of obligated to follow your favorite team as a fan. Team Twitter pages occasionally get into lighthearted feuds with other team pages, which is usually entertaining.

Every baseball fan—actually, scratch that—every living person needs to be following @JoseCanseco. Whether he’s begging teams to sign him, contemplating running for President or Pope, or Texas Longhorns head football coach, the former AL MVP is always an interesting follow. Hug for you, Jose.

This guy, @theaceofspaeder, tweets the most mindblowing stats. You wouldn’t honestly believe that many of them were true. For example, did you know that Barry Bonds had 440 home runs and 359 steals in years he was not named MVP? These stats are truly amazing. Ace of MLB Stats actually has a book coming out in May about the “Coolest, strangest stats and facts in baseball history.”

@ESPN or @FoxSports aren’t going to give you much baseball since they’re general network accounts. Thankfully, most of these outlets have baseball-specific pages. @BaseballTonight, @MLBOnFox, and @CBSSportsMLB are baseball-centric accounts that will give you more than enough national pastime on your timeline.