Best Apps and Sites for the Baseball Season

I am definitely a brand loyalty kind of guy and, like many others, ESPN is my sports drug of choice. What I love about the ESPN ScoreCenter app is that you can identify all of your favorite teams from NCAA College Basketball and NHL Hockey to Major League Baseball. Then, on one screen you can see how all of your teams are doing live. It's the mobile equivalent of a picture-in-picture-in-picture-in-picture TV. You can have it send you alerts when your team scores and click on any score to see the in-game activity and most recent play. And, it's got the scrolling bar across the bottom with the top news of the day. Definitely the app I use the most on my iPhone.  

I know this one has a bit of the "no duh" factor, but I love Twitter for all things sports during every sports season. Specifically during the baseball season, I follow national and local writers, local bloggers and players and get some really cool insight and perspectives from players. For example, I follow a pitcher on the Oakland A's who had a terrible outing and tweeted about it right afterwards. It's pretty amazing to get inside a player's head like that. There is also a free app called MLB Players Tweets, which compiles tweets from roughly 50 current and former MLB players. It's an easy way to stay connected. My favorite Twitter app is Echofon, which is free to download. 

 

While ESPN ScoreCenter provides a good, high level picture of all games and you teams, the MLB.com At Bat app is like taking a magnifying glass and zooming in on baseball. The lite version (free) is very user friendly and lets me identify my favorite team and gives me that team's latest news, upcoming schedule, roster and more. I haven't been able to justify paying $14.99 for the MLB.com At Bat 11 full app but with the full version, you can listen LIVE to every regular season and postseason game, watch MLB.tv live the day of game, follow live on MLB.com Gameday, get push notifications and some other cool features. It's pretty darn impressive.  

Again, as a loyal ESPN brand follower, I frequent the website (and by frequent I mean I live there) and if there is a game one while I am working (please don't tell my boss this), I launch the MLB GameCast, put it up on one side of my computer screen and get busy working. In fact, I've got one up right now as I'm typing this. It's the next best thing to watching it live except when you watch a game you can't get up-to-date stats, switch over to any other live game like you can with the ESPN GameCast.



5. MLBTradeRumors.com 

One thing that all sports fans have in common - we love rumors. The best place to get it for baseball is MLBTradeRumors.com. It really is the most credible site when it comes to breaking news and rumors and gets mentioned frequently on the MLB Network and on the MLB channel on XM Radio. Always good to keep your fingers on the pulse, and impress your friends with, "guess what I heard about player x and team y? I wouldn't be surprised to see a trade go down in the next week." Guarantee your friends will think you are a baseball VIP insider.  

========================================================================
Clever Girls Collective is a social media marketing agency founded by women who wanted to use their deep marketing experience and broad social network relationships for good. We know that women who engage in social media are some of the most authentic, connected, trusted, and vocal influencers -- not only online, but "in real life."Joshua Russell works for a nonprofit leadership network during the day and during all other times eats, breathes and lives sports. He is a blogger with beanesbunch.com (Oakland A's - Rant Sports), TheRedandGold.com (49ers - Bloguin) and WarriorsCourt.com (Warriors - Bloguin), and is a regular guest on the DSD Podcast talking all Bay Area sports. Joshua also recently participated in a 3-day, live blog event for FoxSports.com for the opening weekend of the 2011/2012 MLB season.