Baseball Players, and athletes of all sports really, take pride in where they’re from. Whether it’s the state, city or area code – you always notice players wanting to rep their home area.
Fans tend to do the same thing. It’s always more fun to pull for a player when they’re from your home state (or even your hometown), especially when that player also happens to be playing on your favorite team.
With all that in mind, we went through MLB.com and pulled the home states (or countries) of every player on the 40-man rosters for each team.
We found 3 players from the state of Arkansas which obviously isn’t a ton, but it’s still more than 13 other states. Arkansas tied with Delaware and Iowa for 35th overall.
Three different cities are represented by the three different players. Two of the biggest cities in Arkansas Little Rock and Fayetteville both have a player in the major leagues along with Jacksonville Arkansas – a town of less than 30,000 people.
Here are all 3 guys from Arkansas on MLB Rosters at the start of the 2023 season including what town they’re from and what team they play for.
| Name | City | Team |
|---|---|---|
| Drew Smyly | Little Rock | Cubs |
| Jakob Junis | Jacksonville | Giants |
| Jalen Beeks | Fayetteville | Rays |
HALL OF FAME PLAYERS FROM Arkansas
In addition to the current players from Arkansas, we compiled a list of all players that have gone on to make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame:
| Name | City | Induction Year |
|---|---|---|
| Arky Vaughan | Clifty | 1985 |
| Lou Brock | El Dorado | 1985 |
| Brooks Robinson | Little Rock | 1983 |
| George Kell | Swifton | 1983 |
| Travis Jackson | Waldo | 1982 |
| Dizzy Dean | Lucas | 1953 |
BASEBALL STATE fun facts
California, far and away, has the most current baseball players of any state with 189.
Second most was Florida with 89, followed by Texas (78), New York (42) and Georgia (40).
The Dominican Republic has 120 players currently in major league baseball which is incredibly impressive considering the country has a total population of only 11 million people. By comparison, the state of California has a population of 39 million and the state of Florida has a population of almost 22 million.
Other States
Check out the players from other states as well. We currently only have one other state posted, but check back soon because we’ll have many more up in the next couple of weeks.
