Player demographics from 1947-2023

This chart shows the baseball player demographics from 1947 to 2023. The highest percentage of black players was in 1981 (18.7%). There was a smaller percentage of black baseball players in 2023 (6.3%) than when Jackie Robinson retired in 1957 (6.7%).

Line chart showing the demographics of the MLB from 1947 to 2023.
Post 2016 data comes from page 40 of the 2023 MLB Report Card from The Tides Report - https://www.tidessport.org/reports
NOTE: No data found for 2019
Source: Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)Created with Datawrapper