The Phillies Suck at Social Media and Are Terrible at Using Emojis, Study Says :(

We do a lot of writing around here about how weak the Phillies are on social media. And they are bad. But, incredibly, when it comes to engaging with fans (replying to them, retweeting and favoriting their tweets), they aren’t the worst in baseball.

FanGraphs used Tweets from July 15 of last year to July 16 of this year to rank all MLB teams in terms of #engagement. The graph above shows the Phils holding down the sixth-worst spot in fan engagement (124 favorites, 70 replies, and 23 retweets). As FanGraphs puts it:

A reply requires the most time and retweets are a form of endorsement. These both create more engagement than a favorite. The inclusion of media and emoji does not denote a personal interaction, but they communicate in a different way than text does. Images and video can show behind-the-scenes actions, lineup cards, or highlights. Emoji, while sometimes criticized for being silly, are continually changing digital media, facilitating the communication of emotion. The fire emoji in particular is use to denote “hot” players, strikeouts or outstanding plays.

Right. They also tracked Emoji usage– specifically the fire Emoji, which is usually used to denote a player on a roll or if a team is on a hot streak. [Editor’s note: LOVE that the fire Emoji is finally, scientifically, getting its just due.] It should not surprise you at all that the Phillies – along with six other teams – used the fire Emoji exactly zero times over the last year (either because they’re not good at social media or because none of their players ever go on hot streaks). Overall, they’ve used 14 Emojis. And when it comes to using just any media (pictures, videos, vines, anything) the Phillies come in dead last (284):

But if they aren’t using media, or Emojis, or hot hot fire, what are they even tweeting?

They retweeted two things as a result of that Tweet. Two. 1 million Twitter followers and their plea only managed to produce two retweetable Tweets. Nice job, asshats.

UPDATE: But at least they have EMOJI MONDAY at the ballpark.