Many Major League Baseball players are on Twitter. The MLB Twitter account even maintains what looks to be a fairly exhaustive list: https://twitter.com/MLB/players/members. It’s the off-season so I needed something baseball related to occupy myself with until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training, so I went searching for Baseball’s Kings of Twitter. I would expect to find superstars, MVPs, and aces; particularly from big markets like New York and Los Angeles. Maybe some veterans who’ve been on Twitter for years, or some recent post-season heroes that received extra exposure. Here are the top 19 (I cut it off at 1/4M followers) players in order of Twitter followers:

Player Handle Followers Team Nick Swisher @nickswisher 1,683,346 Indians Yu Darvish @faridyu 1,000,273 Rangers Brandon Phillips @datdudebp 726,775 Reds Brian Wilson @brianwilson38 641,617 Free Agent David Ortiz @davidortiz 552,222 Red Sox Robinson Cano @robinsoncano 435,580 Free Agent Jose Bautista @joeybats19 430,313 Blue Jays Justin Verlander @justinverlander 423,241 Tigers Mike Trout @trouty20 377,378 Angels CC Sabathia @cc_sabathia 365,252 Yankees Bryce Harper @bharper3407 354,929 Nationals Matt Kemp @therealmattkemp 353,367 Dodgers Miguel Cabrera @miguelcabrera 329,657 Tigers Curtis Granderson @cgrand14 293,612 Free Agent Jacoby Ellsbury @jacobyellsbury 267,295 Free Agent Mark Teixeira @teixeiramark25 255,881 Yankees Josh Hamilton @thejoshhamilton 252,639 Angels Shane Victorino @shanevictorino 252,070 Red Sox

The big market advantage holds as most of these guys have recently played for a top 10 market team. Brandon Phillips, Jose Bautista, Bryce Harper, and Miguel Cabrera are the exceptions there. All of these players have made an All Star team, although there are a few that might not make it if there was voting today. The 2013 American League MVP Miguel Cabrera is on there, but the National League MVP Andrew McCutchen didn’t make the list. The 2013 Cy Young Award winners Clayton Kershaw (What up Cuz?) and Max Sherzer are missing as well. The 2013 World Series Champion Red Sox are well represented with three players from that team (Ortiz, Ellsbury, Victorino), but the National League Champion Cardinals have no one. There are no rookies but there are a few youngsters with Trout and Harper. 2013 was Darvish’s 2nd year in the MLB, but I’m guessing some of his followers are familiar with him from his time playing in Japan.

While the majority of the list are sluggers, starting pitchers are represented with Verlander, Darvish, and Sabathia. Brian Wilson is the lone reliever. He was very popular in San Francisco and is always looking for attention with his oddball antics. Miguel Cabrera’s posts are multilingual but Yu Darvish’s are entirely Japanese and Google Translate isn’t much help.

While these are all excellent baseball players, their Twitter follower count speaks more to their popularity than their talent.

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