Robinson Cano and Aaron Judge may be the most popular and likable players on the Mets and Yankees, respectively. According to athlete marketing platform opendorse, they are also among the most social media engaged in the league as well.
This week, opendorse released its ranking of the Top 10 Most Engaging Players in Baseball during the past offseason. Cano, newly acquired by the Mets after nine years with the Yankees and five with the Mariners, ranked fifth in all of baseball, with a combined 1.4 million engagements (1,310,000 of those on Instagram). Judge, now in his third full season with the Yankees, rated 10th with 1,100,000 total.
Alex Bregman of the Astros (4.29 million) and Marcus Stroman of the Blue Jays (1.76M) are first and second in the index, followed by Mookie Betts (1.73) of the Red Sox.
Another highly engaging player on social is former Met, NL batting champion and free agent, Jose Reyes. His Instagram activity alone produced nearly 5 million total engagements during this past offseason.
Opendorse explained its methodology in the announcement:
The Top 10 has no players from the same market, both a rarity and an opportunity for MLB. While a big part of the engagement growth is on Instagram, a growing number of engaged players are taking more to Twitter as well as a way to reach fans. Even more interesting is the Latino influence among MLB players on social, with half of the top ten coming from Latin American countries. The complete Top ten is here, based off total engagements, which includes every like, share, retweet, comment and other social factors each players’ posts received during the indicated time period.