More baseball players are foreign-born, says Forbes
Fred Jeter | 4/18/2024, 6 p.m.
Baseball, “The National Pastime,” is getting more and more international.
The 30 Major League franchises opened the 2024 season with 262 players representing 19 countries and territories outside the United States, according to “Forbes” research.
That’s about 28 percent of all rostered players.
The Dominican Republic is by far the most productive country with 108 big-league players from the Caribbean Island.
Next comes Venezuela with 58 players; Cuba, 18; Puerto Rico, 17; Canada, 13; Mexico, 12; and Japan, 10.
Also, Panama and Colombia have five players each; Curacao, four; South Korea, three; Australia, two; and Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, Germany, the Bahamas and Aruba, one each.
Both league MVPs are foreign-born — Atlanta’s Ronald Acuna of the National League and former Los Angeles Angel, now Los Angeles Dodger, Shohei Ohtani of the American League. Acuna is from Venezuela; Ohtani, from Japan.
The same survey showed that just 6.1% of all players are African-American, the lowest percentage since 1955.
Don’t be misled. African-American (meaning U.S.-born Black players) and Black are terms sometimes confused in statistical evaluations.
Most of the players from the Caribbean and South and Central American nations are of African ancestry.
