Positional Segregation and Career Length in Major League Baseball in the 1990s

The racial and ethnic makeup of Major League Baseball (MLB) has changed over time with the percentage of U.S. born Blacks in the league peaking at eighteen percent in the late 1980s and then declining to only seven percent today. While the percentage of Latinos of all races has grown steadily over time reaching fifteen percent in 1990 and continuing to grow to twenty-eight percent today. To provide insight into how both race and ethnicity impacts career length during the decline in U.S. born Black players and rise in Latino players, we examine how country of origin affects career length and how race and ethnicity affects career length through the link between a player’s position and their race or ethnicity. Using a panel data set from 1990 to 2004, we find evidence that U.S. born Black (non-Latino) players have a lower probability of exiting the league when position controls are included. However, we do find that these U.S. born Black (non-Latino) players are more likely to play a position, outfielder, with a higher likelihood of exit than all other positions after controlling for performance and other player characteristics. These two effects cancel each other in exit analysis that excludes position as a control variable. We also find that foreign born Latino players have a higher probability of exit while Latino players who were born in the U.S. or the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico have no difference in the probability of exit than non-Latino White players.