The White Shortstop: A dying breed?

I was looking at my latest issue of Sports Illustrated and it had a picture of the cubs Starling Castro on the cover. As you know and in case you don’t Castro is African-American or black. This got me thinking about other shortstops in the league and I trying to figure out how many starting shortstops in the league are white. The most obvious one I thought of were Derek Jeter and Troy Tulowitzki.  But that’s all I could think of off the top of my head. As for black SS I thought of Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins, and even my Toronto Blue Jays Yunel Escobar. This got me thinking that if you want to be a SS in the Major Leagues you will have a better chance if you are black.  I looked at all the shortstops in the Majors at the beginning of 2011 and found some interesting results.

National League Shortstops   

NL East

Alex Gonzalez (Atlanta Braves)	Black
Hanley Ramirez (Florida Marlins)	Black
Jimmy Rollins (Philadelphia Phillies)	Black
Jose Reyes (NY Mets)	Black
Ian Desmond (Washington Nationals)	Black

NL Central

Edgar Renteria (Cincinnati Reds)	Black
Starlin Castro (Chicago Cubs)	Black
Yuniesky Betancourt (Milwaukee Brewers)	Black
Ryan Theriot (St. Louis Cardinals)	White
Ronny Cedeno (Pittsburgh Pirates)	Black
Clint Barmes (Houston Astros)	White

NL West

Troy Tulowitzki (Colorado Rockies)	White
Rafael Furcal (LA Dodgers	White
Stephen Drew (Arizona Diamindbacks)	White
Jason Bartlett (San Diego Padres)	White
Miguel Tejada (San Francisco Giants)	Black

American League

AL East

Derek Jeter (NY Yankees)	White
Marco Scutaro (Boston Red Sox)	White
Reid Brignac (Tampa Bay Rays)	White
Yunel Escobar (Toronto Blue Jays)	Black
J.J. Hardy (Baltimore Orioles)	White

AL Central

Alexei Ramirez (Chicago White Sox)	Black
Asdrubal Cabrera (Cleveland Indians)	White
Alcides Escobar (Kansas City	Black
Alexi Casilla (Minnesota Twins)	Black
Johnny Peralta (Detroit Tigers)	White

AL West

Elvis Andrus (Texas Rangers)	Black
Erick Aybar (LA Angels)	Black
Cliff Pennington (Oakland Athletics)	White
Jack Wilson (Seattle Mariners)	White

As you can see there are 16 black SS and 14 white. My original though was wrong as not every SS is black. Some interesting things to note the NL east consisted of all black SS, the AL East however had 4 outta 5 black. Of the 8 playoff teams last year (Atl, Phi, Cin, SFG, NYY, TB, Min, Tex), 6 out of 8 SS were black. Of the teams who finished last in their divisions (Was, Ari, Pit, Bal, KC, Sea), 3 out of 6 were white.  So basically I have come to the conclusion that not all shortstops are black but if you want to have a playoff team you are better off going with a black player over a white player.