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):

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.