With the amount of money being thrown around and the dream of playing a game for a living a possiblity, it's easy to see why most talented baseball players would choose to skip higher education after high school and do what they can to go pro. There are only a select number of players in MLB who go the whole way, actually earning a four-year college degree.
Fox Sports' Jon Paul Morosi dug into this fact in his column Friday morning, noting that only 39 of the 917 players to see action in the majors this season have a degree, a whopping 4.3 percent. But the Arizona Diamondbacks are way ahead of the curve, as they are (technically) the most learned team in all of baseball.
Arizona has seven players with college degrees on their roster, including Willie Bloomquist (Arizona State), Craig Breslow (Yale), John McDonald (Providence), Takashi Saito (Tohoku Fukushi University in Japan), Mike Zagurski(Kansas) and Brad Ziegler (Southwest Missouri State) and J.J. Putz (Michigan), who earned his kinesiology degree 11 years after being drafted. That 18 percent of the league's current degree holders.
Although that looks good on paper, those degrees don't necessarily equate to more offense and better defense:
"I am thrilled to see we have the most educated players, but they are only as smart as their win/loss record," Diamondbacks club president Derrick Hall said when told of his team's standing among baseball's mortarboard wearers.
"I happen to believe our guys are as smart as any, but fans want to see wins. Where I do see the difference is with an educated group that understands the business of the game, the importance of the fan and the significance of giving back to the community. That can be linked to education and a strong level of common sense."
Arizona will have to use all of their smarts to get back into the NL West race, but luckily have lots of time to do so. But they already knew that.
For more on the D-backs, head over to AZ Snake Pit and SB Nation Arizona.
