One of my favorite exercises of the year is digging through the Cincinnati Reds Media Guide and finding all of the different signings from the past year on the international market. Another fun thing is to go through and find out where all of the minor leaguers that are in the organization were born. Today, that’s what we are going to look at. This is where the player was born, not necessarily where they grew up or signed out of (several players fall into the category of being born in one country, but signed out of another – an example is Donald Lutz, born in Watertown, New York but grew up in Germany – he is accounted for in the United States. There were also several players born in the Dominican Republic but drafted out of colleges in the United States that are accounted for as Dominican Republic representatives.). Here’s how things broke down:
Place of birth for the Cincinnati Reds Minor Leaguers
This was a little bit surprising. I expected the United States to make up more than 50% of the chart, but it doesn’t quite make it to 50%. The United States, Dominican Republic and Venezuela dominate things, making up 89% of the players birth places on the chart. Venezuela is a distant third place with 32 players, but no other country even sniffs double digits. Mexico represents fourth place with a total of six players. The chart gets very messy with 13 countries making up the final 11% of the chart, so here’s a full breakdown of how each country was represented:
Reds Minor Leaugers by birth country
Puerto Rico having just one player is a shocker. Jonathan Sanchez is the lone representative. Australia having just one player is also a bit of a surprise – the Reds have more than a few in the last few seasons but it appears that all but Jake Turnbull have been released.
Things to note: Puerto Rico is technically a part of the United States as a territory – but I’ve counted it as a “country”. The same can be said for Curacao, which is a territory of the Netherlands.