When one reads Baseball Prospectus (or in this case one of its offshoots) one expects to be educated by relatively serious “inside baseball” analysis about the subtleties of men attempting to hit balls with polished sticks.
Although the publication has dabbled (absolutely brilliantly I might add) in what constitutes a sandwich, rigorous examinations of baseball do tend to come first.
Unless you have a very unfortunate disability that prevents you from reading headlines, you’ve already noticed that the reading experience you are about to have is slightly different. That doesn’t guarantee it will be better–or worse for that matter–but it does promise to be atypical.
If you’re willing to take the proverbial red pill, let us take a look at one of the most intriguing entities lurking on the periphery of the major leagues: Alex Rodriguez’s Twitter account.
Rodriguez is a pretty bizarre baseball player at this point. He is an excellent hitter days away from his 40th birthday, but given that he offers no defensive value it would be hard to describe him as a true star in terms of his on-the-field value today.
However, he is a superstar in the sense that he’s the face of baseball, or rather the baseball player who possess the most recognizable face to the public. His persona has settled into a beautiful equilibrium balancing fame and infamy, but it feels like that’s starting to change.
As he continues to succeed and steroid-related outrage simmers down, his likability in the eyes of the public is on the ascent. One factor in this trend going forward looks to be his Twitter presence.
For the uninitiated, here are the vital stats for his account:
| Tweets | Following | Followers |
|---|---|---|
| 59 | 41 | 138,000 |
On first glance there’s nothing to see here. A-Rod appears to be an older gentleman who does not really understand what Twitter is for and rarely uses it. His first Tweet on May 31, 2013 was a bland link to an Instagram picture of him hitting off a tee:
back to basics. http://t.co/MFCHhwdiC1
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) May 31, 2013
It was an undoubtedly boring debut and six of his first seven Tweets followed this format with a small caption and an Instagram picture. Much more amusing was Jose Cansenco’s reaction to Rodriguez’s presence on Twitter:
welcome to twitter bitch tit @arod
— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) June 25, 2013
What made this bold proclamation even better was that it came 25 days after A-Rod’s first Tweet, meaning that Canseco noticed Rodriguez was on Twitter almost a month after he joined, but still felt the need to chime in.
It was an inauspicious start on the new social media platform for A-Rod, and given that he only has 59 Tweets to his name in over two years there hasn’t been a roaring surge to prominence. Until now. If we divide his tweets into three distinct time periods the pattern is clear.
| Time Period | Tweets | Days Per Tweet |
|---|---|---|
| May 31, 2013-May 30, 2014 | 29 | 12.6 |
| May 31, 2014-May 30, 2015 | 4 | 91 |
| May 31, 2015-present | 26 | 2 |
A-Rod was putting in the old biweekly Tweet at first before his interest in staying active on the platform cratered for much of 2014 and early 2015. In the last couple of months he’s showing unprecedented Twitter activity.
Not only has the quantity of what he’s putting out increased, so has the quality. Initially boring pictures of training and Tweets about charity causes (not that there’s anything wrong with that) were the norm. Now one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game is opening up a little a bit.
Recently he gave the world a backstage look at the ESPYS that included him rubbing elbows with the cast of Community as well as the obligatory awkward selfie.
Rehearsing backstage with @joelmchale and @kenjeong @espys #Espys pic.twitter.com/wDafM2QtaV — Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) July 16, 2015
#Selfie #Espys #AwesomeTime pic.twitter.com/MpaOGxxSww — Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) July 16, 2015
The last thing he tweeted was a picture from CC Sabathia birthday where he’s rather hilariously smoking a monstrous cigar and no one else has one:
Celebrating with @CC_Sabathia. Perfect way to spend a day off. Is the cigar too much? 
#yankees #HappyBirthdayCC pic.twitter.com/gafrW11Iyx — Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) July 21, 2015
These are the type of things we’d never see from the buttoned-down Twitter persona A-Rod adopted at first, or the indifferent one he followed with.
As we often warn in articles such as these, the sample size is small right now, but whether Rodriguez is having more fun, hiring more PR staff, or his heart has grown a few sizes lately, he’s come a long way.
I’d even dare to say he’s on the verge of becoming someone worth maybe following on Twitter—his most stunning accomplishment of 2015 to date.
(Photo: Winslow Townson-USA Today Sports)