Image courtesy Chris Swann
Recently at Citi Field, I overheard a few Mets fans discussing how demographics have changed over the past decade. They believed the league has become much more international. It piqued my interest. Has it? What can we learn from public data on player race and origin? After crunching the numbers, here are some things I learned.
Based on 2018 rosters at the start of the season, a whopping 97.8% of players are from the America’s. 74% were born in the U.S. Baseball remains an American sport. If it has globalized, it’s only done so by becoming more widely ‘American’. We will review baseball’s Americanization later and for now, we’ll focus on baseball in the United States of America.
Within the U.S., some states contribute to the player pool more than others. California, Florida, Texas, and Georgia are responsible for approximately half of all U.S.-born players.
Why do some states have a higher production of players than others? There are two unsurprising factors. The first is population. The 14 most populous states (27% of states) produce ~75% of players. 13 of those states are among the 14 states that produce the highest quantity of players. Population and volume are significantly linked.
The second unsurprising factor that leads a state to have a higher production of players is climate. 14 of the 15 states with the highest yields of MLB players are in the south of the country. The one exception, Delaware, appears to be an insignificant outlier, with a high yield appearing due to its small population. Yield was calculated as the number of players born in a state for every 1,000,000 citizens of the state.
The states with the highest yields are Florida and California. Clearly, climate is a key factor to player production. As a quick test of that theory, I also examined hockey player volumes and yields by state. The findings are powerfully reinforcing. 12 of the top 13 hockey player-producing states are in the north of the U.S. More interestingly, the top 20 states by yield of hockey players are all in the north. For reference sake, the top 2 are MN at 9.8 and MI at 4.2 players per 1,000,000 people.
Two factors indicative of a state’s player production are population and climate. Amply endowed on both factors, California and Florida lead all states in terms of player volume and yield. They are the U.S.’s two MLB player SUPER-FARMS.