Racial composition of the 2023 Phils (split--posts not in order)

[phillychuck]

Weird, but not meaningful in any way I've heard the word defined.

[andyb]

The fact that the Phillies had an all-white roster last Opening Day

Not sure that ever happened. We definitely have been down to 5 or 6 non white players, but never close to zero. Our starting lineup of position players this season has the possibility of being all white except for Castellanos and occasionally Sosa. That is rare and probably the extreme in baseball, though each move can be justified on baseball reasons.

I do think we are often a little too quick to trade non-white minor leaguers. We often criticize some prospects (JP Crawford) more than others with coded words about effort and personality. This justifies trading them sometimes. It is almost certainly an unconscious bias when they start justifying how a player will fit (or not) into the clubhouse.

[zambonir]

I was hasty in typing "all-white," what's actually correct is what I said in previous post:

Indeed, after last year's Opening Day roster being completely free of Black players from the United States (for the first time since the team first integrated I believe),

Something can be coincidental, and due to many underlying causes, and still be meaningful. It's a failure of MLB (not just in terms of race but in terms of interest in the sport), it's a failure of the Phillies, it's a failure of America.

[andyb]

The Black player concern is all of baseball of course as the percentage of American Black players is down to like 6%. Which means all of MLB averages 1 or 2 and that is it. That is not on the Phillies, but really is a sign of baseball having trouble recruiting kids outside of the suburbs and even then baseball is less popular than football or basketball.

I agree it is in part an MLB failure. Not sure I would put it on America though (other than travel baseball being so expensive). If kids want to play other sports they should be able to do what they want. Maybe MLB should think about sequestering their sport on 7 different TV networks and have a bigger effort to get their games wider distribution (i.e. not on regional cable networks that half the people don't have any more).

[Austinfan]

It's actually a matter of success, basketball is the first choice of many black athletes who'd be good baseball players (6'0 guards), and football is also a major drain, Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson might have been HOF baseball players if they had just focused on that sport. Football and basketball give out far more complete college scholarships than baseball, and college is more attractive to many athletes than riding buses in the minors and living at the poverty line for 5 years out of HS.

For LA players, often the only options is soccer at home or try to get to America through baseball. What is poverty to black Americans (minor league living) is a nice lifestyle if you're from the DR or Venezuela these days.

[Philsmania]

It's actually a matter of success, basketball is the first choice of many black athletes who'd be good baseball players (6'0 guards), and football is also a major drain, Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson might have been HOF baseball players if they had just focused on that sport. Football and basketball give out far more complete college scholarships than baseball, and college is more attractive to many athletes than riding buses in the minors and living at the poverty line for 5 years out of HS.

For LA players, often the only options is soccer at home or try to get to America through baseball. What is poverty to black Americans (minor league living) is a nice lifestyle if you're from the DR or Venezuela these days.

Add to that the reality that college football and college basketball players now get paid pretty handsomely under the new NIL rules. In some cases, kids who play for Power 5 conference schools will come out of college as millionaires. Yes, if you are a poor minority kid growing up in the US, either in an urban slum or a Mississippi backwater community, five years of riding buses at poverty wages is not at all attractive. Even if you are a 6'0" basketball guard whose only future in the game is playing abroad for a few years, the short-term money is a no-brainer.

[julio]

Team is uncomfortably white. Enough to make you wonder at least.

Been thinking that. Turner is great, but I was hoping Bogaerts for this exact reason. I don't think there's anything nefarious, just don't like the optics.

I wanted to come back to this, because it illustrates how much this is all about what we think we see, rather than necessarily reality. Not a criticism of anybody here, just an observation.

Xander Bogaerts is from Aruba. He's Latino. There currently are 10 Latinos on the 40-man roster, so how would Bogaerts change the optics? Because it's not about what these guys actually are, it's about what somebody perceives them to be?

As others have noted there is a dearth of American-born Black players in MLB, for reasons that are complex, and I only see two players on the Phils roster who might self-classify as African American (Walker and Hall).

But if we're just looking at POC, one of the things I do here is periodically update the banner header, using images of key Phillies players (typically, projected starters and key pitchers). As of now, Edmundo Sosa is the only POC position player in the banner - but three of the five key pitchers are POC; four out of fourteen total, excluding the Phanatic. (I don't have images of Trea Turner or Taijuan Walker - I will only use images of players in Phillies uniforms! I may be able to update the banner if I can get usable images of these two in at least a Phils jersey, from press introductions.)

[zambonir]

Not sure I would put it on America though (other than travel baseball being so expensive)

Well, the lack of Black players also stems from a lack of Black managers and general managers and owners and all of those things ultimately stem from society at large.

And all of the things AF and PM mention are things MLB should have attempted to counter.

[BostonRoss]

We could consider a separate "Phillies and players of color" thread to make it easier to read and respond to this topic, but it might be too much work to move all the related posts.

[zambonir]

At this point yes (yes we should and yes it would be too complicated).

My suggestion (which I've made before) is to just lock a "news" post after 24 hours and let the broader discussion continue in the broader thread. But even that is complicated in this case (i.e. the Turner news only just became official today).

And meanwhile we never had a separate Rule 5 thread or one (either old or new) to discuss the most recent HOF news.

[German41]

Who cares? Seriously?

[zambonir]

But if we're just looking at POC, one of the things I do here is periodically update the banner header, using images of key Phillies players (typically, projected starters and key pitchers). As of now, Edmundo Sosa is the only POC position player in the banner - but three of the five key pitchers are POC; four out of fourteen total, excluding the Phanatic. (I don't have images of Trea Turner or Taijuan Walker - I will only use images of players in Phillies uniforms! I may be able to update the banner if I can get usable images of these two in at least a Phils jersey, from press introductions.)

I have definitely noticed it with the banner, but that is probably also because this is all I ever see of it:

[julio]

Yeah. I should probably break up the "murderers' row" image, but I really like it.

[julio]

Who cares? Seriously?

Well, not you.

[Philsmania]

I think spinning it off to another thread is a great idea. One thing I appreciate about this board is that we have (usually) intelligent conversations about sometimes complex matters.

[nycphils]

Team is uncomfortably white. Enough to make you wonder at least.

Hope there isn’t another COVID wave or I suspect this clubhouse is in deep trouble.

[Taudawg]

Team is uncomfortably white. Enough to make you wonder at least.

Been thinking that. Turner is great, but I was hoping Bogaerts for this exact reason. I don't think there's anything nafarious, just don't like the optics.

[andyb]

I think it is just random that the targets that have made the most sense for the Phillies (Harper, Realmuto, Schwarber, Turner) have been white (though I got called out for noting Castellanos' Latino background!). There could be a tiny part of Philly's reputation as a tough place to play for people of color. Just don't think the team cares.

We do have more diverse prospects coming with Rojas and Crawford to start with. Maybe even Hao Yu Lee! Our mediocre Latin American program is part of the problem and we do seem to be trying even if we are not that good at it.

[zambonir]

I wouldn't say it's random at all, culture starts at the top. Historically that's the story of the Phillies in general but right now it actually means Bryce Harper (as well as Dombrowski and Fuld). This is a team of Middle America-bred (and yes Las Vegas counts) generally well-off, travel team-raised stars, most of whom also didn't have to go to college, all of whom Bryce considers kindred spirits or actual close friends.

I think you got "called out" by julio for making too much or too little of the topic, can't remember which, whereas I actually mentioned always thinking he was Italian rather than Latin-American. But at the risk of drawing more fire I would argue that Nick's actual Cuban-American Florida background - in terms of class, wealth, culture, and assimilation - is far closer to being like an Italian-American once upon a time than it is like being a Black American player or foreign-born Latin player today. He's one of the boys, and it's not completely incidental that they preferred Turner (even as we though DD might move towards Bogaerts, and Correa really never came up. Do we know that they actually had all four meetings?).

[schillingfan]

I think you got "called out" by julio for making too much or too little of the topic, can't remember which, whereas I actually mentioned always thinking he was Italian rather than Latin-American. But at the risk of drawing more fire I would argue that Nick's actual Cuban-American Florida background - in terms of class, wealth, culture, and assimilation - is far closer to being like an Italian-American once upon a time than it is like being a Black American player or foreign-born Latin player today.

Italian on names always end with a vowel. Plus, in Spanish the double “L” is pronounced as a “Y.”