Major League Baseball counted 247 players born outside the 50 United States on its 2026 Opening Day rosters, and published the tally country by country. It did not publish the figure that makes the tally interesting: how many people each of those countries had to draw on. Curaçao, with about 156,000 residents, put four players in the majors. That is one for every 39,000 people.
The raw counts are familiar enough to anyone who follows the sport. The Dominican Republic leads with 93 players, as it has every year since MLB began releasing this annual data in 1995. Venezuela is second with 60. Cuba has 20, Canada 17, Japan and Puerto Rico 14 each. Read as a ranking, the list mostly tracks which countries are large and which are small.
Read as a rate, it says something else. We divided each country’s player count by its 2024 population from the World Bank and found that the order changes almost completely. The countries that produce the most major leaguers per person are not the big ones. They are Caribbean islands, and two of the three have populations well under half a million.
The table MLB does not publish
Below is every country and territory on the 2026 list, ranked by population per major leaguer rather than by headcount. The final column compares each rate to the United States, which supplied 701 of the 948 players in the pool.
| Country or territory | Players | Population (2024) | One player per | Rate vs. U.S. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curaçao | 4 | 155,967 | 38,992 | 12.4x |
| Aruba | 1 | 107,995 | 107,995 | 4.5x |
| Dominican Republic | 93 | 11,427,557 | 122,877 | 3.9x |
| Puerto Rico | 14 | 3,202,521 | 228,752 | 2.1x |
| Bahamas | 1 | 401,283 | 401,283 | 1.2x |
| Venezuela | 60 | 28,405,543 | 473,426 | 1.0x |
| United States | 701 | 340,003,797 | 485,027 | 1.0x |
| Cuba | 20 | 10,979,783 | 548,989 | 0.9x |
| Panama | 4 | 4,515,577 | 1,128,894 | 0.4x |
| Canada | 17 | 41,262,329 | 2,427,196 | 0.2x |
| Nicaragua | 1 | 6,916,140 | 6,916,140 | 0.1x |
| Japan | 14 | 123,975,371 | 8,855,384 | 0.1x |
| Honduras | 1 | 10,825,703 | 10,825,703 | 0.04x |
| South Korea | 3 | 51,751,065 | 17,250,355 | 0.03x |
| Colombia | 3 | 52,886,363 | 17,628,788 | 0.03x |
| Mexico | 7 | 130,861,007 | 18,694,430 | 0.03x |
Taiwan also has one player on the list. It is left out of the table because the World Bank population database, which supplies every other denominator here, does not carry a series for it, and mixing a figure from a different source into a ranked comparison would make the ranking less reliable, not more.
Three findings the headcount hides
The Caribbean islands are the outliers, not the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic gets the attention because 93 is a large number. But Curaçao produces major leaguers at roughly three times the Dominican rate and more than twelve times the American one. Its four players are Ozzie Albies and Jurickson Profar of the Braves, Kenley Jansen of the Tigers and Ceddanne Rafaela of the Red Sox. A population of about 156,000 has four men in the major leagues, which is more than Mexico managed with 131 million.
Population is not the engine. Mexico has 3.2 times Canada’s population and produced 7 major leaguers to Canada’s 17. Colombia has 52.9 million people and 3 players; the Dominican Republic has 11.4 million and 93. If size drove the numbers, that pair would be reversed. Whatever is producing players, it is not headcount, and it is not evenly spread across Latin America. That is worth stating plainly, because “Latin America” is often used as though it described one baseball culture.
Venezuela sits almost exactly at the American rate. One major leaguer per 473,426 Venezuelans against one per 485,027 Americans, a gap of about two percent. Venezuela is second on the headcount list and unremarkable on the rate list, which is a reminder that the two lists answer different questions.
What the data does not explain
A rate table shows where players come from. It does not show why, and the MLB release makes no attempt to explain the distribution either. One structural difference is documented and worth naming: the Dominican Republic is the only country with a dedicated MLB-affiliated summer league on its soil. The Dominican Summer League, a rookie-level circuit founded in 1985, fields at least one team from all 30 major league organisations, and its players, generally aged 17 to 22, train at club-run academies in the country year round.
Canada has no equivalent. Neither does Mexico, Colombia or Japan, all of which have their own domestic professional structures instead. Whether the academies cause the Dominican rate or simply follow it is not something this data can settle, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What the numbers do establish is that the gap is large, stable and not explained by how many people live in each place.
There is a second caution worth putting on the record. Venezuela’s denominator is less certain than the others, because the country has seen substantial emigration over the past decade and population estimates for it vary more than they do for, say, Canada. The Venezuelan rate should be read as approximate.
How the 247 breaks down
Of the 247 internationally born players, 208 come from Latin America and the Caribbean. That is 84.2 percent of the international pool from one region. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela together account for 153 players, or 61.9 percent, meaning two countries supply nearly two thirds of everyone born outside the 50 states.
The remaining 39 are spread across Japan (14), South Korea (3), Taiwan (1), Canada (17) and a category MLB labels miscellaneous (3), which holds players whose birthplace and heritage point to different countries: Jung Hoo Lee of the Giants, of South Korean descent, born in Nagoya; Jesús Luzardo of the Phillies, of Venezuelan descent, born in Lima; and Michael Petersen of the Marlins, of American and Nigerian descent, born in Middlesex, England.
That miscellaneous group is small but it is the reason the country-by-country figures in the release sum to 244 rather than 247. We checked, because a three-player gap in a published tally is the kind of thing worth checking before building a table on it.
The Canadian line in the table
Canada’s 17 players are the country’s highest total since 2013 and its second highest since 1995, behind the 19 of 2007. On the rate table, that record-adjacent year still puts Canada at one major leaguer per 2.43 million people, about a fifth of the American rate and roughly a twentieth of the Dominican one.
The 17 are spread across 13 clubs. Cleveland has three, more than any other team, and Seattle and Miami have two each. Exactly one plays for the Toronto Blue Jays, the only major league club based in Canada, and that one is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., born in Montreal on March 16, 1999 to a Dominican father who was the American League’s most valuable player in 2004. He is a single-player illustration of both columns of this table at once.
For a country that has built real institutional depth in other sports, the baseball figure is a useful counterweight. Canada’s sporting infrastructure has been effective at turning a domestic game into a national one and at absorbing an imported one. Producing major league baseball players at anything like a Caribbean rate is a different problem, and the data says it has not been solved.
Frequently asked questions
Which country produces the most MLB players per capita?
Curaçao. Its four players on 2026 Opening Day rosters come from a population of about 155,967, which works out to one major leaguer per 38,992 people, roughly 12.4 times the United States rate.
How many MLB players were born outside the United States in 2026?
247 players from 16 countries and territories, which is 26.1 percent of a pool of 948 players. That pool is made up of 780 players on active 26-man Opening Day rosters and 168 on injured or restricted lists.
How many Canadians are in Major League Baseball?
17 on 2026 Opening Day rosters and inactive lists. That is Canada’s highest total since 2013 and its second highest since 1995, behind 19 in 2007.
Why does Mexico have fewer MLB players than Canada?
The published data does not explain it, but it does rule out population as the cause. Mexico has about 3.2 times Canada’s population and 7 players to Canada’s 17. Mexico has its own domestic professional league, and unlike the Dominican Republic it does not host an MLB-affiliated development league.
What share of international MLB players come from Latin America and the Caribbean?
208 of the 247, or 84.2 percent. The Dominican Republic and Venezuela alone account for 153 players, which is 61.9 percent of everyone born outside the 50 United States.
Sources and method
From the sources. All player counts come from Major League Baseball’s official release of March 26, 2026, “Opening Day Rosters Feature 247 Internationally Born Players”, which lists every player by name under their country of birth. Population figures are 2024 totals from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, series SP.POP.TOTL, retrieved through the World Bank API. Details of the Dominican Summer League, including its 1985 founding, its rookie classification, the participation of all 30 major league organisations and the 17 to 22 age range of its players, come from the league’s official page and the cited entry at Wikipedia. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s birth date and birthplace, and his father’s 2004 American League most valuable player award, are from Baseball Reference.
Our own analysis. Every per capita figure in this article is ours. MLB publishes headcounts only. We divided each country’s player count by its 2024 World Bank population to get the “one player per” column, and divided the American rate by each country’s rate to get the comparison column. The United States row uses 701 players, which is the 948-player pool minus the 247 born outside the 50 states, against the World Bank population for the United States. Regional shares (208 players from Latin America and the Caribbean, 153 from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela) are our own sums from the same list.
One discrepancy, declared. We counted all 247 names in the release individually against the totals printed beside each country heading, and every one of the 16 country figures matched exactly. The narrative section of the release lists country totals that add to 244; the missing three are the players in its “miscellaneous” category, who are listed separately and are counted in the 247. Readers should also know that a second version of this release circulates on MLB.com giving 249 players, 26.3 percent and 19 Canadians rather than 247, 26.1 percent and 17. We used the version that publishes the full name list, because its figures can be checked line by line and they reconcile exactly. Anyone relying on the Canadian number for another purpose should be aware both figures are in circulation.
What we did not do. We did not attempt to explain the distribution, and no causal claim in this piece goes beyond what the cited documents state. Taiwan is excluded from the ranked table for the reason given above. Venezuelan population estimates carry more uncertainty than the others because of emigration over the past decade, so that row is approximate.
Related Raw POV coverage: how Latin American culture is reshaping the Canadian mosaic and what happens when data reshapes a sport.
