Last week I wrote about Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, specifically about the  age cut off date for youth hockey leagues in Canada and youth baseball leagues in America and how that ties to Major League Baseball, and the Rays. 

Just to give a brief recap, the book showed that if you wanted your child to have the best shot at being a very good hockey player the optimal month of birth was January because the age cut-off date for youth hockey leagues is Jan. 1st.  The same thing applies for baseball.  The age cut-off date for youth baseball leagues in America is July 31st, and not surprisingly there are more players born in August than any other month.  Last season the Rays had seven players on their 40 man roster born in August.  They also happened to be one of the best teams in baseball.  That got me to thinking; does having more August born players have a direct correlation to team success? 

I looked at every team from the 2008 season, and then every playoff from the last five years to see if there was any correlation. 

First, the 2008 American League.  What I found in the AL was pretty interesting.  The three division winners (Rays(7), White Sox(8), Angels(6) finished second, first, and third in most August born players.  The Wild Card winning Red Sox came in tied for fifth.  Even the AL CY Young and MVP Winners were born in August.  While all of that seems to support the question I raised above, I’m afraid it may be a statistical anomaly, an outlier, if you will.  Looking at the 2008 National League season doesn’t give us anywhere close to the same results.

The Dodgers finished first in the league with six August born players.  That seems to be a good thing, seeing as how they won their division.  But five teams (Phillies, Brewers, Cardinals, Pirates, D-Backs) finished tied for second with four players apiece.  The Phillies finished first in the East in both the standings and August born players.  The Brewers, however, finished a distant second to the Cubs (who had three August players) and tied with the Cardinals and lowly Pirates.  In the NL it doesn’t appear that having many August born players made a difference. 

Let’s look at the playoff teams from the past five seasons.  Since I’ve already listed the 2008 playoff teams I’ll start with 2007(thanks to Ryan Glass of DRB for helping with the data).

2007:

2006:

2005:

2004:

2003:

As you can see from the tables, a wide variety of teams made the playoffs.  In 2006 two teams with zero August born players made the postseason.  In 2007 and 2006 a team with the lowest number of August born players in their league made it to the World Series.  In 2004 and 2005 the Braves had 1 and 0 August players but still won their division.   In the World Series it’s been a split the past six seasons, with the Phillies, White Sox and 2004 Red Sox winning with a lesser number of August players than their opponent. 

So what can we gather from all of that?  Not much it looks like.  It seems as though while having a high number of August born players cannot be a detriment, and unlike the junior hockey teams noted by Gladwell, it doesn’t seem like it’s a real indicator of team success either.