Does Baseball Have a Race Problem at Manager?

Major League Baseball could have a worse reputation with racial diversity. Baseball is the sport of Jackie Robinson, after all, and today's players come from all over the globe.

There is one thing that catches one's eye, however: When it comes to the guys who are running things on the field, "diversity" isn't the word that springs to mind.

There are 30 managers in Major League Baseball, and right now only two are minorities: The Seattle Mariners have an African-American skipper in Lloyd McClendon, and the Atlanta Braves have a Latino skipper in Fredi Gonzalez. The other 28? They're all white.

That's questionable enough on its own right, and then you get into the context at play here.

The league's number of two minority managers is down from five in 2014 after Bo Porter, Ron Washington and Rick Renteria found themselves out of a job. It's also a low point that MLB hasn't seen in a while, as David Brown of the Hardball Times noted in January that there were never fewer than three minority managers during Bud Selig's tenure as MLB's commissioner between 1998 and 2014.

STUART RAMSON/Associated Press/Associated Press

And that was no accident. As Richard Justice of MLB.com recalled in 2013, Selig made history when he introduced what would come to be known as the "Selig Rule" in 1999. The rule required clubs to consider—though not necessarily interview—minority candidates "for all general manager, assistant general manager, field manager, director of player development and director of scouting positions."

The rule was the first of its kind, predating the National Football League's "Rooney Rule" by four years. And given the doors it opened, it's certainly one of the brighter spots of Selig's legacy.

However, Selig is gone now, having turned over the commissioner's chair to Rob Manfred. It's not a good look that teams appear to be using Selig's exit as an excuse to seemingly ignore the Selig Rule, and the Milwaukee Brewers and Miami Marlins didn't help the perception with their actions in May.

After the Brewers fired Ron Roenicke, they quickly replaced him with another white manager in former player Craig Counsell. The Marlins followed suit after they fired Mike Redmond, replacing him with general manager Dan Jennings. In doing so, neither club so much as paid lip service to the Selig Rule.

In response, Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports and Adrian Burgos Jr. of Sporting News were two of many to ask: Why even have the Selig Rule if it's not going to be enforced?

Such is the situation as it's currently being perceived: There's a lack of minority managers, and it's a problem.

In the interest of fairness, let's grant that it's not all bad. There is at least one bright side to speak of.

You'd never know it from looking at the league's managers, but MLB is actually doing OK in the racial diversity department. That's the conclusion reached by Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, in his 2015 Racial and Gender Report Card for MLB, which gives baseball an A for its racial hiring practices.

That can be taken as reassurance that, no, baseball hasn't regressed to being an oppressively racist institution. Nor is it a stick in the mud. Rather, the league is doing well to fit in with modern times.

Against a backdrop like that, teams should get some benefit of the doubt with their managerial hirings. Further, baseball can't and certainly shouldn't force teams to hire minority managers just for the sake of filling a quota. Though the lanes should be policed, fairness must remain a two-way street.

Also, there's the reality that one year doesn't necessarily equal a trend. Knowing how often teams change managers, it's entirely possible there will soon be a rush of minority hirings and 2015 will come to look more like a mere outlier than the preamble of a major problem.

2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
7	6	6	4	5	2

In a nutshell, all of this is to say baseball doesn't have a crisis on its hands. Though it definitely catches one's eye, the league's current shortage of minority managers is forgivable.

But that doesn't mean anyone has to like it. And given the state of things outside the manager's office, nobody should like it.

In speaking with Brown, Arizona Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall argued baseball should look "like the rest of America," so as to make the product more reflective of its audience.

That's just practical business thinking, and that alone is reason enough to be wary of MLB's shortage of minority managers. Having 93 percent white managers doesn't quite reflect a country that, per the United States Census, is only 78 percent white. Even MLB's audience isn't as white as its collection of managers, as The Atlantic put baseball's percentage of white fans at just 83 percent last year.

Joe Skipper/Associated Press

Even more concerning, however, is how having 93 percent white managers is hardly reflective of the demographics of baseball itself. According to Lapchick's study, only 58.8 percent of the league's players are white, compared to 29.3 percent Latino and 8.3 percent African-American.

Indeed, the disparity between those percentages and the percentage of white managers is staggering. And while it's certainly not impossible for a white man to be the right common denominator in a diverse clubhouse, the way things are now sends a misbegotten message that only white men can be common denominators in today's MLB.

It really shouldn't be asking much for the demographics of the league's managers to be more in line with the demographics of the league's players. And the hell of it is that recent hiring trends actually should be more conducive to that kind of arrangement than they have been.

In recent years, clubs have been shifting away from the old school toward the new school with their managerial hirings. Counsell and Jennings are just the latest to be hired as managers despite not having any prior major league managing experience, with others being Mike Matheny, Matt Williams, Brad Ausmus, Walt Weiss, Kevin Cash, Paul Molitor, Jeff Banister and Chip Hale.

The reasons for this shift are plentiful, but overall it signals that MLB owners and front office executives are more open-minded about whom they hire to run their rosters and clubhouses. Rather than continuing to cycle through old retreads, they're more willing to take chances on fresh faces.

But given what's going on, you do wonder just how much this open-mindedness extends to minority managerial candidates. Based on appearances, Jack Moore had a point when he wrote at Vice Sports that the system still forces minority candidates to pay their dues in the minors before getting a shot, unlike the likes of Jennings who ascended to the manager's position with no experience in such a position.

Jason Miller/Getty Images

It would be a different story if there was a clear shortage of capable minority candidates, of course, but that's not the case. Jon Heyman of CBS Sports presented a list that included two dozen names. By my count, over half (15) of them would be first-time skippers.

All in all, another thing Hall had to say to Brown at the Hardball Times rings true.

"We've hit a bit of a cold streak and we need to get back on track and trending upward with minority hiring," said Hall, who recently hired a minority general manager in former ace pitcher Dave Stewart. "The thing we need to be careful with, and can't get comfortable with, is people just going through the motions and checking off a box. They've got to be legitimate candidates we're considering, and if we're not bringing them to the interviews, shame on us—because they are out there."

In so many words, the current status quo simply can't continue. It would be a tragedy if it did.

For now, it bears repeating that there's no need for anyone to be at DEFCON 1 over the current managerial ranks. That there are only two minority managers is a bad look, but it's not necessarily a start of a trend and doesn't necessarily mean the other 28 managers in the league were poorly chosen.

But this is as far as this status quo should go. There are simply too many good minority managerial candidates out there, and the demographics of the league's managers will be back in line with where it should be if they find jobs in the near future.

Hopefully, that's what will happen. If not, then a hint of a problem will grow into something worse.

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