Three cameras rested on tripods and black cords snaked in knots across the floor as Dansby Swanson, a star shortstop for the Chicago Cubs, signed off on his nearly hourlong podcast and stood up to thank his guest. They had busy schedules ahead, but not in the form of batting practice or weight training.
“What do you have going the rest of the day?” Swanson asked. “Whatever they tell me to do,” his interview subject, the Athletics outfielder Brent Rooker, said with a laugh.
As the men departed the makeshift, bare-bones recording studio inside a sleek, sprawling mansion atop a hill in Phoenix, they encountered a hive of activity. Near the infinity pool, an area for photo shoots had been set up, overlooking red boulders. In the manicured backyard, professional athletes tried out table tennis trick shots under the aim of a cellphone camera. And in a secluded room, an interviewer asked players about their favorite music and other light topics.
So, during the past three spring trainings, Major League Baseball has transformed a luxury home in the desert into a playground of content creation. It is an attempt, in part, to teach baseball players skills that can help them stand out on social media and in broader pop culture.
“I do think it’s part of our responsibility as professional athletes, and we need to be a little bit more open to showcase what we do,” said Swanson, one of the few active baseball players to host a podcast and post on YouTube. “There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s just about finding an authentic way to do it.”
Swanson was speaking during spring training, when the league’s 30 teams travel to either Arizona or Florida to prepare for opening day. It is an opportune time for the league to execute new ideas because players are clustered together and in good spirits ahead of their gargantuan 162-game season.
One sunny February afternoon near Scottsdale, an affluent Phoenix suburb, Logan O’Hoppe, a catcher for the Los Angeles Angels, posed for photos in a garage after taping videos next to a billiards table covered with baseball trading cards. Dellin Betances, a former pitcher for the New York Yankees, gleefully tossed his table tennis paddle in the air after sinking a ball into a small red plastic cup from several feet away.
“Our players really want to do dope stuff, but if no one brings them opportunities, it’s for nothing,” said E.J. Aguado, the league’s vice president of player engagement. “It takes two to tango.”
Marc Ganis, a sports business consultant who has advised some N.F.L. and M.L.B. teams, called baseball an “unpolished diamond” and said many of the league’s prominent American players, such as the Angels center fielder Mike Trout, were reluctant to market themselves and become mainstream icons. The sport’s team-first culture — flipping bats during home run celebrations was long frowned upon — also hindered its upside, he said.
“Baseball has historically been a more modest sport,” Ganis said. “But the younger generations like flashy — they like a lot of self-promotion — and that has an impact on fan engagement.”
Major League Baseball has been trying for years to update “America’s pastime” for the diminished attention spans of the present. (ESPN and the league announced last month that they will end their 35-year broadcast partnership after this season.) Two years ago, it successfully introduced a pitch clock to speed up games that were stretching beyond three hours. But the everyday schedule remains draining, providing little free time for players to record podcasts or plan outfits for tunnel fashion walks.
Aguado said over 30 athletes attended the league’s first content house in Arizona in 2023, and an M.L.B. spokesman said 94 athletes took part last month, when the idea expanded to Florida. Swanson said that the experience made it easy for him to tape two podcast episodes in one day and that the concept is proof that players and league executives are branching out.
“Obviously ball is most important, but there’s other things that happen, too,” Swanson said. “Usually creating the awareness allows for guys to flourish in other things.”
As the sun set over the mountains last month, Aguado met with Pete Crow-Armstrong, a young center fielder for the Cubs whose bleach-blond hair was dyed with blue stars. Aguado held similar intimate huddles with other players to discuss personalized strategies and priorities for the upcoming season.
Some content ideas for Crow-Armstrong were tailored for a trip Chicago was taking to Japan: He could be shown eating sushi and other authentic cuisine, and potentially capture behind-the-scenes footage on the flight overseas. (This week in Tokyo, the Cubs open the regular season against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the defending World Series champions, and their megastar Japanese player Shohei Ohtani.)
Aguado reminded Crow-Armstrong that all M.L.B. players have access to photos that are curated and sent by Aguado’s team to the athletes after games through an app on their phones. He could also ask for hype videos to be created.
Crow-Armstrong, who acknowledged that he can be camera shy, said he recognized the value of being more open to fans.
“You gain the understanding of why that’s important and you learn how to wake up for that kind of stuff,” he said, adding, “Just about all of us are working our tails off to make them enjoy this.”