{"id":595524,"date":"2026-04-10T20:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T20:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/595524\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T20:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T20:34:08","slug":"mlbs-percentage-of-black-players-increases-in-consecutive-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/595524\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB&#8217;s percentage of Black players increases in consecutive years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apr 10, 2026, 02:21 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK &#8212; Major League Baseball said Friday the percentage of Black players on Opening Day rosters increased in consecutive years for the first time in at least two decades.<\/p>\n<p>MLB said that 6.8% of players on Opening Day rosters, injured lists and the restricted list were Black, up from 6.2% at the start of the 2025 season and 6.0% at the beginning of 2024.<\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s 0.6% increase was the most in a season since a 0.7% rise from 2017 to 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida issued annual studies that showed the percentage was 18% when its reports started in 1991.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty of the 64 Black players had been in programs such as the MLB Youth Academy, Breakthrough Series, DREAM Series, Nike RBI and the Hank Aaron Invitational.<\/p>\n<p>MLB said the total includes 22 players 25 or younger and eight older than 32. The average age of Black players was 27.8 and the overall average 29.25.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, 17 Black players assigned to the minor leagues were on Opening Day 40-man rosters, including seven from MLB development programs. That group included Milwaukee outfielder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/36974\/blake-perkins\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Blake Perkins<\/a>, who was brought up to the Brewers on March 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 10, 2026, 02:21 PM ET NEW YORK &#8212; Major League Baseball said Friday the percentage of Black&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-595524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}