With Latinos At Forefront, MLB Gets High Marks For Racial Hiring Practices

St. Louis Cardinals' Yadier Molina celebrates with teammates in the dugout after hitting a three-run home run against the Milwaukee Brewers in the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 29, 2014, in St. Louis. The Brewers won 5-4 in 11 innings. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chris Lee) EDWARDSVILLE OUT ALTON OUT

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) – Major League Baseball maintained its racial and gender hiring practices in the last year, while the percentage of African-American players equaled a study's all-time low set in the 2007 season.

That's according to the annual report by Richard Lapchick's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida. It gave MLB an A grade in racial hiring and C-plus in gender hiring.

The baseball rosters on opening day featured 8.2 percent of players who identified as African-American, equaling the all-time low for the second time since the study began in 1988. It's a decline from 8.3 percent in 2013 and 8.9 percent in 2012.

In April 2013, MLB instituted a task force to consider ways to increase diversity in the game, especially among African-American players.

Overall, 39.1 percent of players (295) in baseball are people of color, with Latino players comprising the bulk (214) of that number. Still, study author Richard Lapchick noted that there is concern throughout baseball about the steady decline of African-American players since 2000.

In gender hiring, there was an increase for women in team professional administration positions from 26.3 percent (357 women) to 27 percent (376), while in the league office those numbers fell from 35.6 percent (155) in 2012 to 30 percent (157) last year. Though there was an increase in the number of women, the total number of positions also rose from 435 in 2012 to 537 in 2013.

However, Lapchick noted that at the senior executive level positions in the league office, women occupied 21.4 percent (12 of 56 positions), an increase of 18.7 percent. That, he said, indicates MLB's doing a better job of interviewing diverse candidates for positions.

"Changes in sports are slow," Lapchick said. "You will meet people who have jobs in Major League Baseball who have had those jobs for 15 or 20 years. So when those jobs become available, they have to be ready for it and have candidates ready to help change the demographics."

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