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Around SBN: Missouri Crashes The Top Line After Kansas Win

State of Players

With both of the top players in the Royal's farm system coming from warm weather states (Eric Hosmer – Florida and Mike Moustakas – California), I wanted to see if it was do to the state's extra days of sunshine or just the state's large population. To make the comparison, I looked at the data using the following guidelines:

  • I compared the baseball data to the 2000 Census – I could have used some combination of multiple census's (censi?), but figured the 2000 Census should be a reasonable example.

  • Without spending way more time than I have, I used the state that the player was born. I know that they could have moved, but the number should be similar.

  • Players born after 1950 were used because expanding the search before that point biased the results towards states that existed. Also the baseball numbers would more closely resemble the 2000 Census.

  • I compared the state's population to the number of players that appeared in any major league game (quantity),the Win Shares of these players (quality) and the combination of the two values.

With these constraints, all the results are available on Google Docs, but here are the states that produce the most and least players per state capita (the Overall Rank is based on a combination of the Win Shares and total player's rankings):

Star-divide

Overall Rank State State Population (Millions – 2000 Census) Person/WS People per MLB Baseball Player
1 California 33.9 844 4881
2 South Dakota 0.8 998 6621
3 Mississippi 2.8 1223 6822
4 Wyoming 0.5 1120 7964
5 Louisiana 4.5 1421 7813
6 Oklahoma 3.5 1584 7807
7 Delaware 0.8 1602 7836
8 Alabama 4.4 1521 8519
9 Illinois 12.4 1614 8489
10 Ohio 11.4 1663 8733





42 Wisconsin 5.4 3269 18689
43 Maine 1.3 4099 20237
44 Idaho 1.3 3635 23106
45 Colorado 4.3 5522 22286
46 New Mexico 1.8 664 32483
47 Nevada 2.0 6364 27373
48 Utah 2.2 7919 29002
49 New Jersey 8.4 16762 13885
50 Vermont 0.6 7805 30441
51 Montana 0.9 16707 25061

 

The numbers seem to indicate that most players come from Sunbelt states and Midwest states. I wonder if the high ranking of the Midwest states if do to the long culture of baseball young kids are encourage to be big leagues. These Midwest states, though, produce about 2/3 the number of MLB ballplayers than California per capita. The states of Delaware and Wyoming don't seem to fit in that group, especially since they have a lot more in common with the bottom ten states that are colder mountainous states.  I have never lived in New Jersey and can't explain why it is ranked so low and maybe someone that lives or lived that can inform everyone.   As always. I am open to comments and suggestions.

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great stuff, as always

Bringing you more-or-less replacement level analysis and commentary to Driveline Mechanics and elsewhere since sometime in 2008.

by Matt Klaassen on Apr 11, 2009 6:12 PM EDT reply actions  

Florida

I woulda thought they’d be higher.

A noob or n00b is someone that lacks intellegance or common sense, most people think that noob is a word used only in the online gaming world, but in reality it is becoming an ever popular word with teenage society.

a noob could be simply a level 100 running round shouting ‘’WTF DO I GO!?’’ or someone calling someone else a noob and then getting hit with a brick, anyone can call anyone a noob, but normally they are noobs themselves
-robert_d_wilfong

by cwhitman412 on Apr 11, 2009 11:02 PM EDT reply actions  

Texas Too

A noob or n00b is someone that lacks intellegance or common sense, most people think that noob is a word used only in the online gaming world, but in reality it is becoming an ever popular word with teenage society.

a noob could be simply a level 100 running round shouting ‘’WTF DO I GO!?’’ or someone calling someone else a noob and then getting hit with a brick, anyone can call anyone a noob, but normally they are noobs themselves
-robert_d_wilfong

by cwhitman412 on Apr 11, 2009 11:02 PM EDT up reply actions  

Now that mention both of those states, I wonder if I should look at the under 20 population

since FL and TX are both full of retirees. AZ is lower than I expected also. I will rerun the numbers when I get a chance.

by Jeff Zimmerman on Apr 11, 2009 11:15 PM EDT up reply actions  

The thing to keep in mind about Arizona

is that it’s been growing at a ridiculous rate since 1950. It went from 750,000 in 1950 to 2.7 million in 1980 to 5.1 million in 2000, and now it’s estimated to be 6.5 million in 2008.

Brewers Baseball and other assorted nonsense (mostly the assorted nonsense) at my blog, What's a Tararrel?

by Lefti on Apr 12, 2009 3:44 PM EDT up reply actions  

This is really interesting!

I know you mentioned the problem of birth place vs where they grew up, and it would be virtually impossible to come up with a way to determine where guys grew up. I know The Baseball Cube tracks what high school the player attended. This might be a little more accurate in determining where a player is actually “from”.
For example, DC is ranked 17th overall. Though a lot of players might have been born there, very few of them are actually “from” DC. Guys like Brendan Donnelly were born there, but he grew up in New Mexico. Emmanuel Burriss is one of the first real home-grown Washingtonians in decades to play in the MLB.
I remember when I was a kid, I took a certain pride in Brady Anderson, because on the back of each baseball card it listed his birthplace, also my hometown, Silver Spring, MD.
I found out later, he moved to Nevada when he was one or two years old, which kind of took away that hometown appeal.

by Willl on Apr 13, 2009 2:41 AM EDT reply actions  

Nice work. Yeah, California is pretty great.

by chilibean_3 on Apr 15, 2009 1:28 PM EDT reply actions  

I was wondering if South Dakota would show up here

Amazingly, the A’s not only have 2 South Dakotans on their roster (and pretty good ones at that— Mark Ellis and Justin Duchscherer), but one of their top prospects, Sean Doolittle, was also born in the state.

Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving

by PaulThomas on Apr 15, 2009 2:14 PM EDT reply actions  

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