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 every player’s home state (or country) on the 40-man rosters for each team.
We found 18 players from the state of Tennessee on major league rosters. That’s enough to rank Tennessee 13th out of all 50 states (Tied with Alabama).
As far as individual cities, Memphis and Nashville are the most well-represented cities with 3 players each. They’re also the only cities with more than one major leaguer.
Here are the 18 guys representing the state of Tennessee 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Austin Riley | Memphis | Braves |
| Brent Rooker | Germantown | As |
| Brett Martin | Morristown | Rangers |
| Collin Snider | Nashville | Royals |
| Dakota Hudson | Dunlap | Cardinals |
| Drew Pomeranz | Memphis | Padres |
| Ethan Roberts | Sparta | Cubs |
| Ethan Small | Jackson | Brewers |
| Jonathan Hernandez | Memphis | Rangers |
| Lane Thomas | Knoxville | Nationals |
| Mookie Betts | Nashville | Dodgers |
| Penn Murfee | Nashville | Mariners |
| Robbie Ray | Brentwood | Mariners |
| Ryan Weathers | Loretto | Padres |
| Sam Moll | Lakeland | As |
| Sonny Gray | Smyrna | Twins |
| Tony Kemp | Franklin | As |
| Wil Crowe | Kingston | Pirates |
Hall of Fame Players from Tennessee
In addition to the current players from Tennessee, we compiled a list of all players that have gone on to make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame:
| Name | City | Induction Year |
|---|---|---|
| Turkey Stearnes | Nashville | 2000 |
| Lee MacPhail | Nashville | 1998 |
Baseball Hometown Fun Facts
California, by far, has the most current MLB players of any state with 189.
The second most was the state of Florida with 89, followed by Texas (78), Georgia (40) and New York (38).
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.
Current MLB Players from Rhode Island