Geographical Phillies - Where'd They Find These Guys?

The Phillies 40-man roster currently lists 41 names, from Antonio Bastardo to Zach Collier. Where are they from? How did they get here? (note, "here" is a relative term; which could be interpreted to mean anything from the Board Room at Anchorage International to the Solar System; herein it's being used to refer to Philadelphia.)

First, a big assumption. Not wanting to spend ninety million years tracking down the minutia of the biographies of 41 guys, I'm using their birthplace as their "hometown," as we can be reasonably sure they were there at some point.

None of the current roster is from the Philadelphia per se, although Erik Kratz is from nearby Telford, PA, a distance of roughly 27 miles. Conversely, Jimmy Rollins' hometown of Oakland, CA, is the furthest, at 2,504 miles distant. 39 other names are in between, with an average distance (wDIST, if you will) of 1,386 miles.

The Phillies come entirely from the northern half of the Western Hemisphere. The northernmost player is Tyson Gillies, of Vancouver, BC, at latitude 49.25° North. The southernmost is Carlos Ruiz, of David, Panama, at only 8.44° N. The easternmost players are Hernandez and Robles of Valencia, at 68.44° West, while Gillies' Vancouver lies at 123.10° W.

The median latitude and longitude would place the "average" Phillies' player just outside of Brandon, MS.

Jeremy Horst hails from Cheyenne, WY, at an elevation of 6,062' above sea level, the highest on the roster, just edging out Roy Halladay's Denver, CO. Ruiz's hometown, meanwhile, lies 20' below sea level. The average elevation of a Phillies' hometown is 666'. I did not just make that up.

Population figures are from the most recent estimates; based on "urban area," where possible. Note that these figures differ from "metro area" or "city limits" figures in most cases. None of the Phillies is from a city as large as Philadelphia (5,325,000--welcome to the big city, kids), using this definition. Laynce Nix, Kyle Kendrick and Joe Savery are from Houston, TX, whose 4,944,000 figure is the second largest on the list.

At the other end of the spectrum (insert "lies another parking lot" joke here), then, is Jake Diekman, of Wymore, NE, population 1,460. Fifteen Phillies are from cities more populous than the State of Alaska (735,000), and 13 are from towns smaller than Fairbanks, AK (99,500). The average population of a Phillies' hometown is 1,225,000.

Of the American Phils, California is the most heavily represented state, with eight names; followed by Texas, with four; and Nebraska, with three. A total of 15 States are represented, alongside six foreign countries.

Domonic Brown's Zephyrhills, FL, scores the highest in Scrabble, at 31, compared to Ben Revere's Atlanta, GA (it's ok, Ben, I forgive you).