We compiled the experimentally measured p/p ratio at midrapidity in p + p collisions from Ös = 23 to 7000 GeV and compared it to various mechanisms of baryon production as implemented in the PYTHIA, PHOJET, and Heavy Ion Jet Interaction Generator (HIJING)/B--B models. For the models studied with default settings, PHOJET has the best agreement with the measurements, PYTHIA gives a higher value for Ös < 200 GeV, and the ratios from HIJING/B--B are consistently lower for all the Ös studied. A comparison of the data to different mechanisms of baryon production as implemented in PYTHIA shows that through a suitable tuning of the suppression of diquark-antidiquark pair production in the color field relative to quark-antiquark production and allowing the diquarks to split according to the popcorn scheme, a fairly reasonable description of the measured p/p ratio for Ös < 200 GeV is given. A comparison of the beam energy dependence of the p/p ratio in p + p and nucleus-nucleus (A + A) collisions at midrapidity shows that the baryon production is significantly more for A + A collisions relative to p + p collisions for Ös < 200 GeV. We also carry out a phenomenological fit to the y_beam dependence of the p/p ratio.