The 2025 FanGraphs Fan Exchange Program: Introduction and Entrance Survey

As we get further and further into the month of May, signs of summer are popping up all around us. Allergies are flaring, you can start to trust the major league stat leaderboards, and colleges across the country are wrapping up their spring semesters.

That last point is important, because summer is the season of study abroad. Every year around this time, thousands of American undergraduates get on planes, learn to navigate a foreign country, meet new people, and discover that their Spanish gets way better after three or four beers. It’s a marvelous experience, and I want to bring it to you, the FanGraphs readers.

Welcome to the 2025 FanGraphs Fan Exchange Program.

For one week, I want you to put your favorite team on the shelf and follow a different one. Do whatever you do in the normal course of being a fan, but do it for another ballclub.

Why?

I’ve been kicking this idea around for a couple years now, because I’ve seen a lot of baseball fans put their blinders up. In football, or, increasingly, basketball, fans of the sport watch lots of different games. Baseball is more regionalized; fans tend to watch their own team to the exclusion of all others.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Baseball teams play six games a week, each lasting almost three hours; if you watched everything, you wouldn’t have time to feed yourself. But the more you watch just one team, the less perspective you have about what’s going on with the other 29 clubs. And without that comparison, ironically, you’re less able to judge your own club.

I don’t think this is a baseball-specific problem. I go through life terrified by the increasing solipsism and incuriosity that our political and business leaders are encouraging and rewarding. A society of 350 million main characters is hardly a society worthy of the name. But that’s a story for another blog; I’m mostly interested in how this applies to baseball.

If you participate, you’ll see how others live, and — I hope — emerge with better information and more empathy. It’s the point of any exchange program: Learn how other people live so you can better decide how you want to live.

What do I have to do?

I want to make this as easy as possible. From June 16 to June 23, do whatever you would ordinarily do in the course of following baseball, but do it for another team.

If you watch two games a week normally, watch two different games a week. If you follow your club’s beat writers on social media, follow another club’s beat writers and read their work. Don’t change anything else about your life.

If your typical baseball-watching experience involves going to games regularly in person, I leave it to you to figure it out. I certainly am not asking anyone to get on a plane to follow the Diamondbacks to Toronto for the week. (Unless you want to; I hear Toronto’s lovely in the summer.)

But first: Fill out this entrance survey, which asks you questions about your current favorite team. It’s opinion-based and almost all multiple-choice (the last few questions are open-ended but only require a player’s name), but it’s relatively involved. Less involved than the SATs, but it’ll take a minute, which is why I’m giving everyone four weeks to do it.

You don’t need to be a FanGraphs Member to participate or anything (though I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this outrageous bargain), but you do need a valid email address. Fear not; I will not sign you up for any marketing lists. I just need a way to distribute the exit survey that’ll be coming after Exchange Week, and to tie the responses to both surveys together.

What’s my new favorite team?

I assigned each team a counterpart from the other league, and to ease everyone’s agita about team-swapping, I instituted a few rules:

• No local rivals, so Mets fans don’t get the Yankees, Angels fans don’t get the Dodgers, and so on.
• No recent (i.e., within the past 10 years) World Series opponents. If you’re a Braves fan who won’t watch the Twins because you’re still ticked off about the 1991 World Series, I salute you, King Hater, but there’s only so much I can do.
• You won’t get a team that’s playing your favorite team on the week in question. That’d defeat the purpose of the whole experiment.
• Most of the exchange teams are within one time zone of the original favorite, so you don’t have to call out of work at noon or stay up past midnight if you want to participate.
• There are five NL teams in the left two time zones and only three AL teams, so I had to fudge it in two spots. The Red Sox, who are on a West Coast road trip the week of the 16th, got assigned to a West Coast team. The Diamondbacks are at Toronto and Colorado the same week, so I gave them to a the AL Central’s White Sox, who are within one time zone of both cities.
• Within those restrictions, I tried to match temporary fans with teams that would offer something different from what they’d ordinarily be watching. So don’t worry, White Sox fans, I didn’t stick you with the Rockies.
• I’m sorry, someone had to get the Astros.

Here are your assigned teams. This assumes you have access to MLB.TV, or Extra Innings, or some other means of watching all 30 teams regardless of where you live:

What happens if you don’t have MLB.TV?

Well, there’s a seven-day free trial available at MLB.com. Sign up on the 16th and that’ll cover you for the whole week. If you can’t access the free trial but still want to participate, you can follow any team you get on your own local TV. If you’re a Yankees fan but you live in Minnesota, take the Twins. If you’re an Astros fan in Houston and you get Rangers games on cable, watch the Rangers, if you can stomach swapping with a divisional rival.

Basically: Follow the chart above if you can. If that’s not an option, and you still want to participate, do whatever makes sense for you, and I’ll account for it in the exit survey. As long as you make an honest effort, we can worry about the rest later.

What do I get out of this?

Nothing tangible. There’s no right or wrong answer, no way to win the game. I want to learn about how all of you consume baseball, and my hope is that you’ll gain some useful insight about the sport and your own relationship with it. Maybe some of you will build a lasting affection to your new team, travel to see them in person, and while at the ballpark, you’ll lock eyes with a handsome stranger across a crowded hot dog stand and fall in love.

Maybe that’s a bit too ambitious.

Worst-case scenario, you’ve spent a few minutes filling out a survey while you’re at work, and you’ve gotten a week of trying out a different team to break up the routine of a six-month season. Baseball fans know better than anyone the value of a change of pace.

So that’s the challenge: Fill out the entrance survey at some point before June 16, tune in to your new team when the time comes, and wait for further instructions. I hope you’ll participate, if you’re able. I’m excited to find out what we all learn together.