Where were you the night of April 27th, 2012?
I won’t soon forget getting off the couch that night, letting my dog out, and checking Twitter while I waited for her to come back inside. News had hit Twitter that Mike Trout was being called up (you may remember that Bryce Harper was called up just hours before Trout).
I quickly went to all my league sites and picked up Trout and Harper in any leagues in which they were still available.
The point of this story is that Twitter helped me win two of my leagues in 2012. It’s a great tool for alerting you to important fantasy events (injuries, call ups, closer changes) and aggregating fantasy news and articles from around the web.
The web is full of A TON of great and free fantasy baseball content and Twitter is an invaluable tool for helping you locate that information.
Getting Started
If you need a primer on Twitter, Brien Bonneville over at thefakebaseball.com has a great introduction and some tips for new users. As a technology lover, I especially like the suggestion to download and use a Twitter dashboard like TweetDeck. Twitter’s interface is a little clunky. Using a dashboard allows you to more efficiently access different features in Twitter, arrange and follow multiple streams, and access multiple Twitter accounts at once.
Who To Follow
For the last couple years, David Gonos has put out his list of 99 Fantasy Baseball Twitter Accounts You Should Follow. There are probably thousands of fantasy baseball Twitter accounts out there and Gonos has done a great job of isolating some of the best. You’ll see names like Matthew Berry, Jason Collette, Mike Gianella, Tristan Cockroft, and Ron Shandler on his top 99.
SFBB Tip – Twitter Lists
In my opinion, one of the most underutilized features on Twitter is “Lists”. A Twitter “List” allows you to group and organize Twitter users. You can subscribe to lists created by other Twitter users and others can subscribe to your own lists. When you then visit a list, the Tweets from everyone in the list are displayed.
Subscribing to a list is different than following someone. This is nice because you can easily segregate people you follow for personal reasons from others by using lists. For example, if you subscribe to one of the lists below, you won’t have MLB injury news cluttering up your Twitter stream. When you’re ready to do some fantasy baseball reading, you can then view the appropriate list.
Instead of you having to seek out fantasy baseball experts to follow, I’ve created created several Smart Fantasy Baseball Twitter lists you can follow. You can see all the SFBB lists here, or visit the individual lists with the links below:
How To Subscribe To a List
- After clicking on one of the links above, locate and click on the “Subscribe” button in the top left corner of the page.
- Keep in mind that lists you have subscribed to do not hit your Twitter feed. To view the contents of a list, after logging into Twitter, click on the “View my profile page” link.
- Then click on the “Lists>” link, in the top left corner, to see all lists you are subscribed to.
- On the ensuing page you will see all of your lists. The title of each list will be displayed along with who created it.
- Once you click to view a list, all the Tweets from members added to the list will appear in a feed for you to read.
- If you do make the jump to using a Twitter Dashboard, like Tweetdeck, you can add followed lists to the Dashboard and have them easily available (and avoid having to jump through these hoops above).
Who’s Missing?
Who are your favorite Twitter follows? Is there anyone missing from the lists that you think should be added? I don’t intend for the lists to be all encompassing, and I put a preference on quality over quantity. There are also some fantasy baseball experts that don’t tweet much about fantasy baseball, so I excluded them (Gonos’ list of 99 had some that I left off my lists for that reason).
Stay Smart. And thanks for reading.
I got your site from David Gonos.I wrote a long rambling comment about who has the time to go through 100 or so twitters. I owe him and you an apology of sorts.after reading you I see how it might be done. BUT I am an idiot when it comes to technology.To just follow your instructions will take me days and I still will probably not understand how to do it. And why?? To win a fantasy league I have.been in for 23 years ? And I was 49 then to give you an idea why I can’t be a tech guy. To win $ on these daily fantasy fan duels? The real money went to the guys who invented THAT concept. Why couldn’t you and David done that.? I wish I had. The truth is my fantasy league and your tech twitter dashboards are like Mr.Gones lists. All the same, just hobbies. My best to you.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Eddie. I am admittedly obsessed with baseball, fantasy baseball, and technology. I understand that to some extent it’s a pointless exercise. I’ll probably never make money from doing this (I’ve still never tried the daily fantasy leagues), but I do enjoy it. I play in a few leagues an total buy-ins for all my leagues is less than $200. So I do invest a ridiculous amount of time for a chance to win a few hundred dollars. Perhaps that’s not very “smart”…
But I am learning new things and hoping to help others along the way. I started the site because I didn’t think there was a great resource available to help those that did want to understand more about baseball statistics and fantasy baseball strategy. Most of the sites just tell us who to pick up, who they like, who they don’t. I’m naturally curious and want to get to the “why”.
I realize some of the technology information will be overwhelming to some. Maybe I need to design a way to filter that out for those that won’t be interested. Even still, I hope to provide information that will be helpful to anyone not interested in learning a ton of new technology. Things like the Twitter lists, or BaseballPress.com, or talking about books I read, etc.
Thanks again. I hope you stick around!
Hi Tanner, Thanks for the reply to my rambling comment. The more I read your blog the more amazed I am by your intelligence, technical prowess, obsession with fantasy baseball and with all due respect your perserveranse in light of the fact that it seems so few people read it save Mr.Gones and me. I understand it as a hobby but fear “there is less to it then meets the eye”. Yes great sports writers like Olney and Meck fill some of their columns with Fantasy and the guys at RotoWorld suck in a few dollars but the truth is that most people with regular boring jobs, although I am a criminal trial lawyer just love competition,may like baseball and want something to check every morning in the summar like the poor man’s stock market.BTW I hate the stock market. My real question is “Does all your work and great future ideas make a difference? In my 12 team almost 20 year league it doesn’t.in the early years of checking box scores to try and figure out how many points a team got a night did it change things?Now there’s an idea for a book we
could write…”Fantasy Baseball from Box Scores, 3AM faxes to Twitter and Bell” Again, I admire you and hope you will reply to an old guys rumblings.
Eddie
Thanks, Eddie. I understand the whole, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” argument. The site is small now, but you found it! I am hoping that if I keep churning out valuable material that an audience will find it and keep coming back for more. It won’t be for everyone. But millions upon millions of people play this silly fake baseball game, so who knows. If there’s anything you would like to know more about, please let me know.
My first fantasy league was in the mid-90s. We drafted out of magazines and only tallied up the results at the end of the year. We’ve come a long way, eh?
Happy July 4th,! I enjoy your blog so much and respect your privacy, so please feel free to tell me to mind my own business and still pursue this learning experience.
I realize how hard it is, but we hit the waiver wire only once a week in our league.You certainly have given me great tools, but if you have my three or tfour hours to devote, what and who do you suggest I spend this time? For instance since reading your thoughts, I really believe Olney is a must read,
Thanks in advance, Eddie