A quick change for 2012. I will be livetweeting today's and many other games on Twitter this season, as I did last year. However, I will now do it on the Burning River account, @BRBBlog, rather than my personal account, @jlablitz. I won't do every game, but will be on for most if anyone wants to follow along while the game is in action or comment back and forth. Remember that Twitter is a much less formal setting than this webpage is so be prepared.

Twitter, not just for posting links to articles anymore.

Follow both @BRBBlog and @jlablitz for occasional sparks of genius and pictures of lizards.

Burning River has been down for the last day or so, so sorry if anyone has had any difficulty reaching the site. We were thrown back to about a year ago, but it has been fixed now and should be fine from now on.

In more site update news, All-Time Indian Bios will be a little less frequent during the regular season, changing from twice a week to once or twice a month. We will keep it going for the foreseeable future, however, with even more Indians greats. Look forward to Sandy Alomar Jr on April 4th with Joe Gordon, Mike Hargrove, Bill Wambsganss and more to follow.

Sooner than all that, we will continue to provide you with updates to the Indians 25 man roster throughout the rest of Spring Training and offer daily recaps of every game as soon as the regular season starts again. With the regular season starting we will continue to have our 'Player of the Game' awards as well as previews for every series. Thanks for sticking with us and come back often during the regular season.

Go Tribe!

Last season the Indians got with the times and embraced social marketing for the first time. Instead of punishing players for bypassing the press and talking directly to fans, they encouraged it. Over the last year many players have filtered through with some fading away and others showing their twitter excellence. Since I've yet to come across a comprehensive list of Indians twitter accounts, so I made one myself. This list includes every player within the Indians development system who has ever had an account and some relative information about them. The information provided should be useful when deciding if each player is worth following. Verified accounts have been checked by twitter.com to ensure these are the real athletes, but I am fairly sure of the accuracy of the rest as well. The language is the primary language tweeted.

Notes: 

1. Highest tweet per day average.

2. Indians player with the most followers (31,111).

3. Longest active Indians twitter account.

4. Has tweeted in the past, but has since deleted. Account is now inactive.

5. Newest Indian to twitter.

6. New account to replace his original @DHuff11.

7. Most total tweets.

8. Protected account. He'll allow you to follow if you request, but keep it nice since he isn't public yet.

9. Most followed minor leaguer.

10. Greatest mustache on twitter.

Along with the players, there are a few front office personnel and others involved with the team on twitter. Here are some of those accounts:

For those looking for the official twitter accounts of the different levels of the Indians organization, they can be found here:

For those wondering why some players have not been included in the lists above. Here is a list of inactive accounts (no tweets in 2012) and some that have been deleted:

The tale of Matt LaPorta is one that should be taken note of. He was originally on twitter before most of the team was and he quit before the Indians changed policies due to negative feedback. During the resurgance in 2011 when the entire "Bullpen Mafia" among others started tweeting, he reactivated his account. After a very short time the amount of negativity and death threats caused him to delete his account for good. Remember that these are real people who will possibly read everything that you send to them. It is like they gave you their personal cell phone number to send texts to all day. None of these athletes need to do this, it is for the fans enjoyment alone. If one person abuses this gift, they can be blocked individually, but if a large number of people do it, we will probably see the openness of these players disappear like the accounts of Nick Hagadone, Lonnie Chisenhall and LaPorta. If you don't have something nice to say, then don't @ mention someone. If Indians fans as a community can act like human beings then we all will be able to enjoy getting to know these players a little better. 

At 10:00 this morning, in Goodyear, Arizona, the team shop at Goodyear Ballpark opened, full of new 2012 merchandise for the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians. Living in Goodyear and being an Indians fan, this was a big deal to me. I could not wait to go there and check out the new items. Spring Training is just around the corner, and before we know it, players will be starting their workouts and the pre-season will begin. Just the team shop opening gets me excited and in the mood for baseball. The new shirts, the hats, the mugs, the Ziz figurines, everything, are just another sign that baseball is almost here.

The ticket office at Goodyear Ballpark has been open for over a month now. If you are interested in buying tickets and attending games, you can click here for more information.

Stay tuned to Burning River Baseball for updates and reports throughout Spring Training.

Now that the offseason is officially upon us, Burning River Baseball would like to congratulate former Indians Jake Westbrook and Arthur Rhodes on their first World Series rings and quickly move on to the 2012 Indians campaign. For the offseason, we will be adding a new section to the site called "All-Time Indians." These will be career bios of some of the greatest players in Indians history, to give the young fan some perspective and remind the old of some of their favorite players. We will continue to update you with Indians offseason news and analysis along with this new segment.

The first tier will include 2 pitchers, 2 centerfielders and a shortstop and will begin next week. 

I make one of these every season to give credit to the best players on the Tribe. This is the second year I've done it in this style and the first year I've used all my own pictures (except the picture of Josh Tomlin which I borrowed from www.cleveland.com). I made it as a background, but for those of you who don't use a widescreen TV as your computer monitor, it probably won't work. It's nowhere near good enough to bother making it in other sizes.

Original picture uploaded from my flickr. To save on your computer, go to the original, view the large size and right click to save.

The Indians season may be over, but we're not done yet over here at BurningRiverBaseball.com. We will continue to produce unique pieces daily during the off season. Coming later today will be the Indians top ten defensive plays from 2011 and over the next month there will be statistical updates from this year, discussions of team MVP/league MVP and an update of the contracts section of the site to tell you who will be back next year and who will be gone. We will also keep you updated with any big news during the offseason as we prepare for 2012. Keep coming back as Burning River Baseball will still be here with all your Cleveland Indians needs.

Burning River Baseball is now on Google+, just search Burning River Baseball to find us. For those not lucky enough to have been invited to G+ yet, but want to join, we will be giving away all our invites to the first Indians fans who ask. Just e-mail burningriverbaseball.com with address you would like the invite sent to. First come, first serve and we will do our best to get as many people invited as possible.

Burning River Baseball is proud to be the newest member of the Bloguin network and to be the only blog on the network that exclusively covers the Cleveland Indians. Right now the Indians are on fire and so is Burning River Baseball. We started Burning River in March of 2011 and plan on following the Indians as long as the team stays in Cleveland. Everything on the site is produced by either Joe or Mike, two uber Indians fans from before the glory days. Don't be afraid to comment or follow us on Twitter, BRBBlog, or on Facebook, Burning-River-Baseball. We love and readily accept any interesting discussions or feedback to help us become better human beings.

Welcome to Burning River Baseball and make sure to come back again. We post new material at least once every day.

Joseph Coblitz & Michael Melaragno