St. Louis Cardinals’ Top Twitter Follows Part 2

Part of the fun of the upcoming St. Louis Cardinals’ season is the interaction with fellow fans. Let’s take another look at the best fans to follow this year.

Yesterday, we brought you a fun project that a fellow Cardinals’ blogger decided to take on, and detailed the fun that it was. Today, we continue to take a look at this and give you the exciting and intriguing matchups as well as detailing where our writers stand.

If you missed out on yesterday’s post, check it out here. Here is how the bracket works, the contest is seeded exactly like the NCAA tournament with 64 twitter accounts seeded by the amount of followers, with sites like ours and Viva El Birdos being excluded and bringing it down to just individuals who tweet about Cardinals’ baseball.

While I did register a loss yesterday to the great Bernie Miklasz, I really had no chance, and there won’t be any smear campaign here.

Let’s take a look at the other finished match-ups we previewed yesterday.

#3 @MattSebek vs. #14 @elmaquino  

Unfortunately, I was wrong on this one, as Sebek edged elmaquino by 12% of the vote.

#2 @BirdsOnTheBat13 vs. #15 @lil_scooter93

This matchup is not finished yet, but as expected @BirdsOnTheBat13 has 56% advantage over @lil_scooter93.

Redbird Rants Inclusions

The bracket that will be voted on tomorrow and Friday has been unveiled today, and the complete bracket can be found here. Today, we have two inclusions in the bracket, they are two writers that I respect a ton and love having on the staff, and have always enjoyed reading their work from when they weren’t even writing here.

#6 @CardinalsFarm vs #11 @Carly_Schaber

Today brought great news for Redbird Rants. Since I came on as Editor in October, I have been trying to find guys that write elsewhere and give them the opportunity to write with me and enhance their reach with FanSided. I have gotten quite a few guys from other sites to come on board, but I have had a few fall in my lap as well.

@CardinalsFarm is one of those guys. He contacted me earlier in the month with interest in coming on board to give us some fresh info on Minor League Spring Training and whatever he feels necessary as the season goes on.

More from Redbird Rants

• St. Louis Cardinals: Ask me anything with Josh Jacobs – 12/8
• St. Louis Cardinals: Alejandro Kirk or Danny Jansen?
• St. Louis Cardinals: Dan McLaughlin charged with DWI
• Cardinals News: Day 2 of Winter Meetings brings big rumors
• The St. Louis Cardinals are active in the shortstop market, per report

I know I am not alone in my belief that CardinalsFarm is one of the most well respected Cardinals’ prospect writers out there. He currently writes for KangarooCourtSTL, a site he and a few other writers started up and have done great work with.

On the other side of things, we have @Cary_Schaber. Carly is a fantastic person, who is actually in her freshmen year in college in the St. Louis area. I have had many personal conversations with this wonderful person, and have read her work in the past.

Currently, Carly is a Cardinals’ Blogging Free Agent, as she is writing for The Odyessy currently. Despite this, she will still be offering up her opinions on Cardinals’ baseball on her twitter account and that makes her a fantastic follow for sure.

However, I will be voting for my guy @CardinalsFarm here, and I expect most of you will too.

#2 @TheCatOnFox vs #15 @PBCBeat

Here we have what I would hope could be a big time upset. @PBCBeat (Chris Greene) is a writer here and is someone I love having on staff. He has written for CardinalsFarm and Scout.Com in the past, and has been with us since November.

I enjoy having his experience and prospect knowledge on hand. He is very good at this, and despite his time to write not being what it used to be, he is still a great writer, and I know we will have great material from him this season.

In my eyes this is a very winnable matchup for Chris.

He’s going up against someone who doesn’t tweet much beyond news on the #STLCards and has the follower base he has because he is on TV. Greene may not be on TV or on the radio locally, but he is a solid writer, and did a great job covering Palm Beach for Scout.com last season.

So, please go vote for @PBCBeat when his matchup is tweeted out by @RooCourtSTL.

Intriguing Matchups

#4 @CardsNation13 vs #13 @StavaonSTL

While I appreciate the Fan Accounts for their reach and their help in tweeting out our articles, their fame is a bit contrived. Writers like @StavaOnSTL (Sammy Stava), and our staff build our reach on our own name and not on the Team Name.

However, CardsNation is a great Fan Account that should be looked at by all social media experts and users for info on how to build your reach and how to do social media the right way.

On the other hand, Stava is a good writer who is cutting his teeth in the Sports Journalism world and deserves credit for what he does. He currently is an intern with KTRS, and also writes for me over at Bleedin’ Blue. He is a great asset who may find himself writing for us here at Redbird Rants in the summer months.

So, vote for a fellow FanSider in Sammy Stava, and help him bring home the 13-4 upset!

#6 @C70 vs #11 @ArtLippo

This is one tough matchup here. On one hand, we have @C70 (Daniel Shoptaw) the originator of the United Cardinals’ Blogger group and writer for Cards Conclave. He is a fantastic writer in his own right, and a good guy to listen to talk baseball, as he’s a regular podcaster with Dan Buffa (Best Dans in Baseball) and others.

Daniel was a tremendous help for me in getting started blogging, and has done the same for numerous other writers. I look forward to hopefully meeting him at the annual Blogger Night or Day game this coming season.

On the other side we have @ArtLippo who is not your typical fan. He doesn’t go along with the popular opinion, and is a very smart man. Lippo can be found tweeting primarily about Blues’ Hockey, but often tweets about the Cards as well.

If we were talking about Blues’ twitter follows, I would be picking Art hands down. However, C70 is a giant when it comes to the Cardinal Bloggerverse, and without him a lot of us wouldn’t be where we are today.

So, make sure you vote for Dan here!

#5 @RobRains vs #12 @TaraWellman

Here we have yet another toughie. Two great people and two people I love interacting with on Twitter. The first one we have is Rob Rains, Rains is a writer for his own site at STLSportsPage.com, and has had his own radio show in the past.

He has authored many books on the St. Louis Cardinals. I own a couple of them, and thoroughly enjoyed his book Intentional Walk, a book on the faith of the St. Louis Cardinals’ players.

While Rains is a must read online and in print form. Tara Wellman has established her own multimedia platform on several different topics including Cardinals’ baseball. You can find her work at tarawellman.weebly.com.

Tara is absolutely a must follow on twitter, this is where she is at her best. She is always providing opinions and analysis on the Cards and also runs her own YouTube channel where she has a feature called “Bird Seeds”, where she covers Cardinals’ baseball.

This is a tough one to call. I absolutely enjoy Rob Rains’ work, and his son B.J. as well. Both are must follows for Cardinals’ fans. However, I think I will vote for a fellow blogger here in Tara, and hope for the 12-5 upset.

This is absolutely nothing against Rob, just my preference.

Next: What's it take to be a good twitter follow?

Well, there you have it folks these are the intriguing matchups. You will have a chance to vote for these on the @RooCourtSTL twitter account tomorrow and Friday. Make sure you vote for Dan Buffa and Daniel Solzman today!