The more nuanced answer to the proliferation of Haverford graduates involves a confluence of factors. With the success of the book and movie “Moneyball,” which preached an unconventional look at long-established baseball tenets, the sport has opened its doors to new strategies. Almost every major league team now employs multiple scouts and executives who have no professional baseball experience but know their way around the new terminology and sophisticated tools of sabermetrics.

Haverford, and institutions like it, might just be well positioned to fill those needs. For example, before graduating, a vast majority of Haverford students are required to write a senior thesis, a project that takes at least a year to complete. As many as 20 percent of Haverford’s economics majors — many of them baseball players — choose baseball or sports as the subject of their thesis. Some professors and administrators at Haverford said that it might be the extensive, scholarly study of sports that had helped jump-start so many athletic careers for the college’s graduates.

Some recent thesis titles at the college include:

■ Simplicity Versus WAR: Examining Salary Determinations in Major League Baseball’s Arbitration and Free Agent Markets

■ Spillovers in Baseball: The Effect of Veteran Presence on Peer Performance

■ Public Financing of Baseball Stadiums: Understanding Extortion and Its Remedies

That sports would frequently be a topic at Haverford is not all that surprising. Although small, the college has 23 athletic teams, which means that roughly 35 percent of the student body plays a varsity sport. And there is a practical explanation for the sports-related thesis subjects as well.