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 22 players from the state of Illinois, the 6th most of any state.
It’s probably not surprising that Chicago is the most represented city with 6 guys. Only two other cities, Naperville and Park Ridge have more than 1.
Here are the 22 guys representing the state of Illinois on MLB Rosters at the start of the 2023 season including what town he’s from and what team he plays for.
| Name | City | Team |
|---|---|---|
| Alek Thomas | Chicago | Diamondbacks |
| Brent Suter | Chicago | Rockies |
| Brock Burke | Chicago | Rangers |
| Carson Kelly | Chicago | Diamondbacks |
| Colin Holderman | Bourbannais | Pirates |
| Collin McHugh | Naperville | Braves |
| Danny Jansen | Elmhurst | Blue Jays |
| Dylan Dodd | Elk Grove | Braves |
| Jack Suwinski | Chicago | Pirates |
| Jake Cousins | Park Ridge | Brewers |
| Jake Odorizzi | Breese | Rangers |
| Luke Williams | Park Ridge | Dodgers |
| Michael Massey | Palos Park | Royals |
| Nick Maton | Chatham | Tigers |
| Nick Solak | Woodridge | Braves |
| Nicky Lopez | Naperville | Royals |
| Reid Detmers | Nokomis | Angels |
| Ryan Noda | Volo | As |
| Rylan Bannon | Joliet | Astros |
| Seth Beer | Maryville | Diamondbacks |
| Trevor Richards | Aviston | Blue Jays |
| Tyler Alexander | Chicago | Tigers |
Hall of Fame Players from Illinois
In addition to the current players from Illinois, we compiled a list of all players that have gone on to make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame:
| Name | City | Induction Year |
|---|---|---|
| Jim Thome | Peoria | 2018 |
| Hank O’Day | Chicago | 2013 |
| Whitey Herzog | New Athens | 2010 |
| Rickey Henderson | Chicago | 2009 |
| Kirby Puckett | Chicago | 2001 |
| Robin Yount | Danville | 1999 |
| Bill Veeck | Chicago | 1991 |
| Al Barlick | Springfield | 1989 |
| Red Schoendienst | Germantown | 1989 |
| Warren Giles | Tiskilwa | 1979 |
| Robin Roberts | Springfield | 1976 |
| Freddie Lindstrom | Chicago | 1976 |
| Jocko Conlan | Chicago | 1974 |
| Jim Bottomley | Oglesby | 1974 |
| Billy Evans | Chicago | 1973 |
| Will Harridge | Chicago | 1972 |
| Lou Boudreau | Harvey | 1970 |
| Red Ruffing | Granville | 1967 |
| Ray Schalk | Harvel | 1955 |
| Ed Barrow | Springfield | 1953 |
| Joe McGinnity | Cornwall Township | 1946 |
| Al Spalding | Byron | 1939 |
| Charles Comiskey | Chicago | 1939 |
BASEBALL STATE fun facts
The state of California (by quite a bit) 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
We are slowly but surely getting all the states published from the data we collected. Here are a few of the other states we currently have available.