Where Are Baseball Players Born?

How do Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, and U.S. differ at developing MLB baseball players?

Elly de la Cruz of Dominican Republic, Paul Skenes of Lake Forest, CA, and Pete Crow-Armtrong of Sherman Oaks, CA

Baseball is not a truly global team sport like soccer or basketball, but it still ranks up there with, say, cricket. It’s mainly played in three parts of the world: North America (U.S. and Canada), the northern half of Latin America down through Venezuela and Colombia, and northeast Asia (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan).

Apparently, American baseball spread outward around the Caribbean from Cuba, the culturally dominant Spanish colony. Baseball is tied into Cuban nationalism (e.g., it’s widely believed that Fidel Castro almost made the major leagues as a pitcher, although in truth he was a better high school basketball player), so there are multiple narratives.

One, popular in the U.S., is that baseball became hugely popular after it was introduced by American soldiers who defeated Cuba’s Spanish colonial overlords in 1898. Another, popular in Cuba, is that it was already a massively popular game because it had been adopted by the Cuban independence movement from the 1860s onward as a rebuke to the bullfighting of Cuba’s colonial master, Spain.

I’m sympathetic to the latter story, but the details seems a little off because most early Cuban cultural contacts with the U.S. were through the Gulf Coast, where baseball was not terribly popular until the late 19th Century. For example, the first great baseball player from the Deep South was Ty Cobb, the Georgia Peach, who reached the major leagues in 1905.

Before the Civil War, baseball had been a northern sport, played with various rules in New York, Massachusetts, and other northern locales. During the Civil War, Union soldiers had a lot of time on their hands to play each other on the baseball diamond (or baseball square in the Massachusetts Game), but they needed to agree on the rules. Eventually, the New York Game, the best organized of the variants, won the loyalty of Northern soldiers and became the National Pastime when the North won the war.

But that meant baseball was not very popular in the South for a generation or so after the war.

Also, was bullfighting ever really truly supposed to be a sport for the Cuban masses? Bullfighting is amazing, but it’s more of an art form than a sport. Thus, bullfighting correspondents are less like sportswriters than art critics. As a sport for the masses, it sounds kind of like grand opera would be.

“Well, Little Jose, you have today off from school. What are you going to do?”

“Me, Pedro, Juan, Diego, and the rest of the kids are going to get together and put on The Barber of Seville!”

“Have fun!”

So, I dunno what the precise story is with the origins of Latin American baseball.

But Cuba’s role is undeniably important in the spread of Latin baseball.

Baseball Reference tabulates major league players by country of birth. So I’ve ranked country of birth in order by today’s usual all-around metric of Wins Above Replacement *

Paywall Here. After it, I’ll explain what I see from this table.

Not surprisingly, the United States is the native country of big leaguers who account for about 85% of WAR going back to the final third of the 19th Century.

In 2025, 73% of opening day rosters were American-born, followed by 10.5% Dominicans. Baseball teams carry more relief pitchers lately, who tend to be more white American than other positions, so the long term trend toward more foreign-born players hasn’t been all that steep lately. Still, Dominicans per capital are about four times as likely per person as Americans to make the majors. In contrast, Mexicans are only about 1/24th as likely to to make MLB rosters as Americans and about 1/100th as likely as Dominicans.

Second in terms of all time WAR is the Dominican Republic, followed by Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Japan.

Per capita, Puerto Rican big leaguers tend to be even better than Dominicans (as measured in WAR per player, not per person in the overall population). This seems to be because Puerto Rican prospects are treated as Americans contractually, and must come through the amateur draft, so they are more expensive on average than Dominicans and thus more carefully selected. In contrast, big league teams are allowed to sign hordes of cheap 16 year old Dominicans and enroll them in “baseball academies” the teams have constructed in the DR. So, there are more marginal Dominicans in the big leagues than Puerto Ricans.

Cuba and Japan would rank higher if their authorities (the government in Cuba, the baseball leagues in Japan) hadn’t made it hard for their stars to leave. A number of Cuban big leaguers got here on rafts, while there was only one Japanese player let play in the U.S. before 1995. Similarly, the American leagues and Mexican leagues have squabbled at various times, and since 2018 it’s been harder for Mexican stars to sign with MLB teams.

Northeast Asians have been getting taller and baseball favors height.

American baseball had its notorious color line until 1947, which slowed recruiting from the Caribbean, but seven Dominicans played in the the MLB before WWII. A tiny number of Cuban players before WWII would probably have been ruled out for being kind of black if they’d been born in America. Cuban Dolph Luque, who pitched from 1914-1935 and went 27-8 and 1.93 in 1923 for the Reds, is usually considered the first Latin American-born star.

The difference between Dominicans and Mexicans is striking. The all time best Mexican-born big leaguer is Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, but 18 Dominicans have higher career WAR totals than Fernando.

Why? One reason is that big league Dominicans tend to be quite black (probably blacker than Dominicans on average), while Mexicans tend to be mestizos. The Dodger scout who discovered Fernando said the reason he didn’t find more Fernandos in Mexico was that Mexicans tend to be too short-legged to become baseball stars.

The greatest Mexican-American player was slugger Ted Williams, whose mother was slightly mestizo-looking. But Ted was 6’3”. Since Ted, many American-born Mexican-American stars like Evan Longoria have been half-white.

In contrast, the greatest American-born Dominican, Alex Rodriguez, was more mulatto than black.

This Nature reason in turn leads to Nurture differences: baseball is now wildly popular in the DR.

Countries differ in how many of their stars are pitchers of position players. Down through history, 42% of the WAR earned by Americans has been earned by pitchers rather than position players. The Dominican Republic is fairly similar at 36% (e.g., crafty hurlers like Juan Marichal and Pedro Martinez).

In contrast, while African Americans used to be outstanding pitchers (Satchel Paige, Don Newcombe, Bob Gibson) and catchers (Josh Gibson and Ray Campanella), in recent decades as the NFL and NBA have won the hearts of African-Americans, the few American black ballplayers tend to get funneled toward centerfield or shortstop (for fast blacks) or first base (for slow, strong blacks) because integrated baseball youth teams have lots of whites to pitch, catch, or play third. In contrast, the unintegrated DR produces more well-rounded squads, so it has lots of fine pitchers and catchers.

Puerto Rico is only 19% pitcher WAR, while Mexico is 77% pitcher WAR (largely Fernando Valenzuela and Teddy Higuera Valenzuela, both portly 1980s lefty screwballers, although the latest reports is that they weren’t close kin). Japan is also pitching-centric. E.g., the rich Los Angeles Dodgers have recently signed pitchers Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and unique slugger/pitcher Shohei Ohtani who is scheduled to pitch an inning today as part of his pitching comeback from injury.

Australia is 70% pitcher WAR without having yet developed a really fine pitcher.

Baseball and cricket are largely culturally antagonistic. If your country plays one, it doesn’t play the other. Only five Jamaicans have made the major leagues, but they tended to be pretty good. Australia has been producing some tall relief pitchers lately.

Dutch-colonized Curacao and Aruba have been producing some stars over the last generation.

Free-swinging Latin American batters used to draw fewer walks than Americans, but the gap seems to have closed in this century. The Caribbean motto was, “You can’t walk off the island” — i.e., American scouts wanted to see you hit the ball hard.

But Caribbean players have become much more powerful in recent decades, thus scaring pitchers into not throwing the ball down the middle of the plate. Is this because of better nutrition or because you can legally buy steroids without a prescription at Dominican drug stores?

European-born big leaguers tend to be either old-timers who immigrated with their families when young or U.S. servicemen’s kids. Hall of Fame pitcher Bert Blyleven was a rare post-WWII immigrant from the Netherlands.

For example, most Irish-born players came during the Dead Ball era before Babe Ruth, so the Irish natives hit few home runs but stole a lot of bases. However, this reflects the tendencies of baseball more than a century ago rather than the Irish being innately fast and small.

Max Kepler of the Twins is a rare major leaguer who learned to play baseball playing in German-language leagues. His American-born mother and Polish-born father are professional ballet dancers who made their careers in Berlin.

Baseball tends to be a warm weather sport because it needs dry infield dirt. For example, Toronto fans support a major league team, the Blue Jays. But not that many Canadian natives get to the big leagues.

815 players are listed as of “Unknown” nativity, but virtually all are, say, a guy with a name like John Smith who had a cup of coffee in the big time in 1904. The Unknowns average -0.04 Wins Above Replacement, so they were replaced.

Ed Porray, who played in three games in 1914 for the Buffalo Buffeds of the short-lived Federal League and was credited/demerited with -0.4 WAR, is the only major leaguer listed as having been born “At Sea.”

You can’t say baseball isn’t fanatical about its statistics.

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* Note: What is WAR? A typical regular is worth about two additional wins per season for his team over a generic replacement player that can be picked up from Triple A minors or off the waiver wire, while a superstar is worth six or eight incremental wins per season, with a Judge or Ohtani approaching ten WAR).