The 2014 Baseball Census is in per Best Tickets, and some of what was uncovered is quite interesting. The obvious answer was that there were more pitchers than any other position in MLB, but as you dig deeper this stat pales in comparison to some of the more alarming numbers.
First, designated hitters make a ton of money, yet there are only 153 of them as of 2014. First basemen are actually averaging more than anyone, but the bigger question here is if pitching is so important to baseball, then why aren’t more pitchers cleaning up at the bank? On top of that, the DH’s have a higher lifespan than anyone else in the game. This is probably because all they’re there for is hitting and a lot of times, power hitters from the past will slide nicely into the DH role once the age starts to kick in.
The second number that glaringly stands out is the amount of players coming from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Compared to the other countries, these two have clearly corned the MLB market. As for the United States, Florida, Texas and California have more players than anywhere else. This shouldn’t be surprising since weather definitely plays a role in the game.
This isn’t to say that aspiring MLB players need to make a move to any of these places, but the numbers sure does speak volumes.