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"Spring is in the air and Major League Baseball season is officially underway. Hot dogs, beer and lazy days at the ballpark are on tap for the next several months. But how do the game's players, teams and leagues stack up on the social web? \nThe social media agency Banyan Branch spent the offseason from October through March collecting Twitter and Facebook data to see who dominates baseball's digital conversation.\nNot surprisingly, the agency found that the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox \u2014 high profile teams in major East Coast markets \u2014 rank highest in online popularity. The Yankees have nearly 6 million followers and fans on Facebook and Twitter, while the BoSox come in second with almost 4 million. The Philadelphia Phillies, however, have the most Twitter followers with around 680,000. \nWhich teams are most active on Twitter? The San Francisco Giants lead the league with 18,000 all-time tweets. The Seattle Mariners come in second with 16,000 posts and the Toronto Blue Jays third at 13,000. \nAmong free agents this offseason, megastar Albert Pujols commanded the most online buzz with 35,000 Twitter mentions. Prince Fielder, Jose Reyes and the Japanese MLB newcomer Yu Darvish also inspired a ton of tweets. \nYankee Nick Swisher is Banyan Branch's \"Most Valuable Tweeter\" with nearly 1.5 million followers. Angels pitcher C.J. Wilson has him beat by a longshot for actual tweeting, though. He comes in at 13,000 posts, compared to Swisher's 1,200. \nCheck out the infographic below for the full picture of baseball's social media landscape. \nWho are your favorite baseball Twitter follows? Let us know in the comments. \n\nThumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=652260\u202C"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/04/04/baseball-social-media-2/>