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 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):

Overall Rank	State	State Population (Millions – 2000 Census)	WS/person	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.