Major Legal Baseball

All of the recent talk of performance enhancers in baseball has brought up some very interesting points. What only a few seem to notice, however, is that money can be a performance enhancer as well.

With trading, contracts, and virtually no limits on a player’s movements, it seems to be that the longer one is playing major league baseball, the more likely one is to not play for one’s home team. As much as fans would hate to admit it, players have no team loyalty higher than they have loyalty to getting paid.

Using www.baseball-almanac.com, I found that, of all the players in Major League Baseball for the 2008 season, California had the highest number of players listing California as their birthplace; 225 to be exact. To simplify my further inquiries, I looked at every 15th person on the list to see what team they are currently for:

Geoff Blum – born in Redwood City, plays for the Houston Astros
Brooks Conrad – born in San Diego, plays for the Oakland Athletics
Jim Edmonds – born in Fullerton, plays for the Chicago Cubs
Kevin Frandsen – born in Los Gatos, plays for the San Francisco Giants
Eddie Guardado – born in Stockton, plays for the Minnesota Twins
Phil Hughes – born in Mission Viejo, plays for the New York Yankees
Jeff Karstens – born in San Diego, plays for the Pittsburgh Pirates
Derrek Lee – born in Sacramento, plays for the Chicago Cubs
Scott McClain – born in Simi Valley, plays for the San Francisco Giants
Xavier Nady – born in Salinas, plays for the New York Yankees
Carlos Quentin – born in Bellflower, plays for the Chicago White Sox
Kirk Saarloos – born in Long Beach, plays for the Oakland Athletics
Mike Sweeney – born in Orange, plays for the Oakland Athletics
Jered Weaver – born in Northridge, plays for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Joel Zumaya – born in Chula Vista, plays for the Detroit Tigers

Of these 15, six players currently play in their home state. Looking into it, however, I found that…
Brooks Conrad has never played a season with his hometown team, the San Diego Padres, but has played his 2 seasons with a California team.
Scott McClain has played four seasons in all but only 2 with a California team.
Kirk Saarloos has only played 4 out of 7 seasons with a California team.
Mike Sweeney has only played 1 season out of 14 with a California team.
Only Jered Weaver and Kevin Frandsen have played all three of their season with their respective teams.

How much money does it take to buy loyalty?

The New York Yankees, one of the richest teams in baseball, has the top three highest paid players: Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, and. Derek Jeter, in that order. However, the highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez, has stated his favorite team growing up was, in fact, the New York Mets. In all, the Yankees spend a total of $209,081,577, whereas the poorest team, the Florida Marlins, spends only about 10% of that, $21,811,500, about 6,000,000 less than the Yankees spend on Rodriguez alone (here). The second richest team, the New York Mets, only spends $137,793,376; a bit over half of what the New York Yankees are able to spend.

Money has become the performance enhancer baseball officials should be most worried about. It is no surprise that the top spending team tends to be one of the most formidable teams in baseball; and what about the best player? Well, he has recently admitted to using performance enhancers as well.