I walked into my kitchen one morning last week and caught baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, holding forth on ESPN Radio about the state of his sport. Almost as an afterthought, the hosts asked the commissioner about a puzzlement.

For the first time in baseball history, nonwhite men, Alex Cora and Dave Roberts, were the managers of both World Series teams, the Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. And 42.5 percent of major league players are nonwhite, according to the most recent survey, which covered the 2017 season.

Yet just four of baseball’s 30 managers this season were not white. What’s up with that?

“It’s become a very different interview process as the game has evolved,” Manfred replied. “Much more focused on analytics.”

I winced. I have heard Manfred lay down this riff before, and his excuse-making is no more satisfying today than when he offered those words in 2015 and 2016. Manfred suggests hiring goes in ebbs and flows and highs and lows. As baseball in 2015 had a single nonwhite manager, his invocation of metaphoric lows that year had a Death Valley quality.