Since clubs aren't developing young American players the way they once did, the ones who get drafted are coming from the college ranks, where they're closer to a finished product.
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is in his third World Series as a manager, and his second with the Astros. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, who were fired in the wake of the team's sign-stealing scandal.ĭusty Baker Jr. The Detroit Tigers' Al Avila was the lone one before his firing in August.)Īnd Baker, like so many Black men and women in upper levels of management, was hired by the Astros in 2020 to help clean up the mess left behind by former manager A.J. There are no Black or Hispanic general managers. There currently are only three Hispanic managers in MLB and two Black managers, one of whom is Baker. (As an aside, it's becoming clear that baseball's powers that be see Dominican and other Latin American players in the same way the NFL's powers that be see Black players: good for entertainment and little more.
That's the first big reason why the number of non-white players in MLB is nearing 40 percent even as the number of Black American players is fading. If the Boston Red Sox polish a gem at their academy in El Toro, near the Dominican's Caribbean coast, they maintain control of him for years if they had an academy in Roxbury, still a predominantly Black neighborhood not far from Fenway Park, and developed a pitcher with a filthy slider, they could lose him to the rival Yankees in the draft once he comes of age. territories and Canada aren't subject to the MLB draft (unless they're playing for an American college team), and while the MLB Players Association has been trying to change that, it remains a financial boon for clubs.Įvery team in baseball operates an academy in the Dominican Republic, where as Bryant notes they can train and develop dozens of players for the cost of one signing bonus an American-born player would receive after being drafted. To this day, players born outside of the United States, U.S.
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But not long after Curt Flood won the right of free agency for players and contracts began to rise, things started to change. He sees structural issues as the root causes for baseball's racial nosedive when it comes to Black American players, all of them basically pointing back to economics.įor decades, MLB organizations did the work of developing young players in their system. "It's been that way for 40 years."īryant is a longtime chronicler of the game, first as a beat writer for the Oakland A's and New York Yankees and now as an author - four of his nine books focus on baseball - and critic.
"Baseball is a white, suburban game reinforced by foreign labor," Howard Bryant told me this week. Given their decline in numbers in the sport over the past few decades - the Society for American Baseball Research says the peak, in 1981, was 19 percent - as well as the realities of how the MLB sausage is made now, maybe it shouldn't be. On opening day this year, 7.2 percent of players on rosters were North American-born Black men. Philadelphia Phillies (L-R) Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Ruiz, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard celebrate after defeating the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 4 of the World Series in Philadelphia on Oct.
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