What PBR State Has The Most Major Leaguers?
March 20, 2014
By Nathan Rode
National Supervisor
Several weeks ago, a reader sent in this question: What Midwest state produces the most major league players and why?
I finally found some time to look into it and will at least give a glimpse of the answer. Midwest can be a vague term so for this exercise, we’ll simply stick to the Prep Baseball Report coverage area. PBR got its start in the Midwest and expanded into states beyond the region, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s use these 10 states as the parameters: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
I used Baseball Reference’s frivolities page to do a place of birth search. I used the year of debut option, selected to divide it by the 50 states (and Washington, D.C.) and then selected a range of years. I chose four different eras to look at the all-time numbers (1851-2013), the 20th century on (1901-2013), the draft era (1965-2013) and then a subjective modern era (1990-2013). Technically, major league associations started in 1871 with the National Association, but I selected the entire range of years to use all of Baseball Reference’s database. As you’ll see, there isn’t much change in the results.