Last year, I did a nice little post on diversity and why I love baseball and after watching this year's All-Star Game with Prince Fielder winning the Home Run Derby and Carl Crawford winning the MVP it had me wondering if we are going to start seeing more African-American players in the major leagues over the next few years.Just at this All-Star Game alone, we saw Edwin Jackson, Chone Figgins, Carl Crawford, Curtis Granderson, Adam Jones, Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, Orlando Hudson, Justin Upton, Torii Hunter, and Derek Jeter on the All-Star team. That's a total of 11 players and last season there were only 4 on the team: Derek Jeter, Milton Bradley, Grady Sizemore, & Russell Martin.
The reason for the jump is the influx of young African-American talent in the game of baseball. Of the 11 All-Stars, 7 were under 30 years old to start the season: Justin Upton (21), Adam Jones (23), Edwin Jackson (25), Prince Fielder (25), Carl Crawford (27), Curtis Granderson (28), & Ryan Howard (29).
Quite an impressive group of talent right there and that doesn't even include these young stars: C.C. Sabathia (28), Matt Kemp (24), B.J. Upton (24), David Price (23), Russell Martin (26), Grady Sizemore (26), Denard Span (25), Rickie Weeks (26), Michael Bourn (26), Brandon Phillips (28), Scott Hairston (29), & James Loney (25).
There's also some younger players who have come up in the last few seasons who the jury is still out on, but they have a ton of talent as well: Delmon Young (23), Howie Kendrick (25), Elijah Dukes (25), Lastings Milledge (24), James McDonald (24), & Chris Young (25)
The 30+ African-American talent pool includes quite a few star or former star players: Derek Jeter (35), Torii Hunter (33), Jimmy Rollins (30), Vernon Wells (30), Jermaine Dye (35), Chone Figgins (31), Marlon Byrd (31), Ken Griffey (39), Garrett Anderson (37), Gary Sheffield (40), Mike Cameron (36), Derrek Lee (33), Milton Bradley (31), Latroy Hawkins (36), Randy Winn (35), Orlando Hudson (31), Juan Pierre (31), & Marcus Thames (32)
Now it's great that there is all this young talent, but it doesn't mean squat if there isn't any more talent to follow it.
Teams like the Tampa Bay Rays are a hotbed for young African-American talent and seem to take pride in drafting and developing African-American players . They have drafted Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton, & David Price over the years from their current team, but they also drafted Delmon Young, traded for Edwin Jackson, and in the past few years have added future stars Desmond Jennings and Tim Beckham through the draft as well. The Rays are definitely at the forefront of the movement.
In fact, if you look in the minor leagues there are a ton of African-American prospects right now, including 7 players who were named to the MLB Futures Game US Team:
Jason Heyward, OF, Atlanta Braves:.316 AVG/11 HR/41 RBI/4 SB/.942 OPS
Desmond Jennings, OF, Tampa Bay Rays:
.323 AVG/8 HR/44 RBI/33 SB/.901 OPS
Eric Young, 2B, Colorado Rockies:
.294 AVG/5 HR/31 RBI/48 SB/.806 OPS
Chris Carter, 1B, Oakland A's:
.297 AVG/14 HR/63 RBI/9 SB/.901 OPS
Jemile Weeks, 2B, Oakland A's:
.303 AVG/7 HR/27 RBI/2 SB/.901 OPS
Daryl Jones, OF, St. Louis Cardinals:
.283 AVG/2 HR/27 RBI/7 SB/.743 OPS
Trevor Reckling, P, Los Angeles Angels:
6-4/2.25 ERA/100 IP/77 K's
The talent doesn't stop there though, here's some more highly talented African-American Minor Leaguers:
Austin Jackson, OF, New York Yankees:.324 AVG/4 HR/34 RBI/15 SB/.840 OPS
Michael Taylor, OF, Philadelphia Phillies:
.330 AVG/15 HR/65 RBI/18 SB/.970 OPS
Ben Revere, OF, Minnesota Twins:
.308 AVG/2 HR/36 RBI/33 SB/.750 OPS
Kyle Blanks, 1B, San Diego Padres:
.283 AVG/12 HR/38 RBI/.878 OPS
Cameron Maybin, OF, Florida Marlins:
.332 AVG/3 HR/22 RBI/7 SB/.900 OPS
Dominic Brown, OF, Philadelphia Phillies:
.310 AVG/9 HR/38 RBI/14 SB/.948 OPS
Tim Beckham, SS, Tampa Bay Rays:
.277 AVG/4 HR/48 RBI/7 SB/.738 OPS
Dexter Carter, P, Chicago White Sox:
5-2/3.34 ERA/105 IP/129 K's (leads Minors in K's)
Dee Gordon, SS, Los Angeles Dodgers:
.299 AVG/2 HR/44 RBI/49 SB/.748 OPS (son of pitcher Tom Gordon)
Thomas Neal, OF, San Francisco Giants:
.346 AVG/15 HR/59 RBI/1.043 OPS
Greg Halman, OF, Seattle Mariners:
.212 AVG/20 HR/54 RBI/5 SB/.737 OPS
Jeremy Jeffress P, Milwaukee Brewers:
3-4/4.62 ERA/60.1 IP/70 K's
Andrew McCutchen and Dexter Fowler are two other top prospects, who both have made their MLB debuts this year. McCutchen was seen as one of the Top 10 prospects in baseball coming into this season and Fowler was in the Top 50. Both have seen success so far and should continue to improve.
Overall, you can see that there is a great deal of young, highly talented African-American player and I think the number of African-American players in MLB is going to increase over the next 5 t0 10 years.
More: MLB & MLB Weekly
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