The Major League Baseball Player Association (MLBPA) has launched an online social community aimed at changing the way that fans engage with the game called “Infield Chatter”.

It’s very own social media platform, the service will enable Major League Baseball players to directly engage with fans as well as each other, discussing trending topics, shared interests on and off the field. The platform will double up as a Facebook-like platform but has been made specifically for the MLB.

Over 60 Major League Baseball players are already using the service to engage with their fans including All Stars David Ortiz, Josh Donaldson, Dee Gordon, Eric Hosmer, Adam Jones and Jake Arrieta. And it’s seemed to be a fairly popular platform with the players so far with Adam Jones from the Baltimore Orioles saying that its refreshing to have a platform where conversations can be about a lot of different passions outside baseball.

“Players are excited to get the opportunity to work with a platform that makes it easy to have real, unfiltered conversations between celebrities and fans,” he said.

“These are real fans in there who are talking about what matters to them.  I like being a part of that by talking about what’s important to me.”

During the past couple of weeks, fans that already follow a lot of those players have received invitations to join them on Infield Chatter, however, it was opened to all fans aged 13 and older from the beginning of the week.

Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark said that it was about reinforcing the special kind of bond between players and fans.

“As a former player, I understand how important it is to reinforce and strengthen the connection between the players and fans,”he said.

“Infield Chatter takes full advantage of today’s emerging technology to allow the players and fans to interact in a space that they’re familiar with and about topics they have in common.  We’re excited about the potential Infield Chatter has to help bolster the popularity of the players and the game itself.”

The new service underlines the MLB’s desire to promote and increase their engagement with fans after they released the MLB Fans social network earlier in the year with another world-first platform.

The difference between MLB Fans and Infield Chatter is that MLB Fans is primarily regulated and updated by the Major League Baseball itself whereas each player has a personal page on Infield Chatter where fans can learn more about that player’s interests away from the ballpark.