The comment that anything either than star level NPB players would be RL level is rediculous.
Takashi Saito has been one of the most dominant relief pitchers in the game and he was MOR type in NPB. So Taguchi was a BELOW league-average NPB player and was an above-RL level bench player in the NL.
Tsuyoshi Shinjo has an NPB OPS below 800 with bad eye ratios and he was a 1.5 WAR type below-average starter in his first two seasons.
Either than K.Matsui, there hasn't been a single true position player bust from NPB (Fukudome's decline aside), and the sub star level players have showed value above RL level.
Every year there are quality RP that come in from the NPB, and more and more we're finding out that SP translates very well from NPB to MLB. Matsuzaka's decline has made us lose all sorts of perspective. Its led to rediculousness like $2.5mil a year to Colby Lewis.

I think the poor NPB teams would get nuked, but what would a poor AAA team do?
If an average team in a league plays RL ball or better in the AL, than you are a major league caliber. An average AAA would do signficantly worse than RL.

Doc, I actually don't agree that a AAA all-star team would be competitive in any league.
You mentioned the adjustment process and thats particularly it. For every guy that would put up an above-RL season, another would completely implode. This is because of the sizable gap of quality in between AAA and major league.
NONE of the NPB star position players had adjustments season either than Hideki Matsui in his rookie season.
Ichiro, Johjima, Iguchi, and Iwamura. These guys IMMEDIATELY translated to AL ball. Most of them started hitting their physical declines in a couple years, but these guys were IMMEDIATELY well above-average starters in the American League.
The same has been true of succesful SPs like Nomo, Kuroda, Uehara, and Lewis. The truth is, I think the SP would translate tremendously from NPB to AL. The successes of the most recent star NPB pitcher in Kuroda and Lewis confirm this for me. Both have been full-time 4+ WAR type mini-stars. I also think that there more than a hundred guys who either be succesful MOR/BOR starters or above-average relievers.
All that said we still haven't had enough guys crossing over although we plently of examples of AAA stars washing out in the NPB. 

After 1-2 years sure if you've developed some decent talent. But now you're not really a AAA team anymore are you? You're an MLB team thats developed its prospects.

Again, you're no longer AAA then. This is about comparing league quality, not developing star prospects.
I think my argument focusing on star level players may be throwing the discussion off course.. To put it differently what would a generic " league-AVERAGE" NL, NPB, or AAA player do in the AL?
If those players do RL level or better, its major league. If below RL, than you're minor league in my book. 

I think its more a representation that the quality of the NPB as a whole is higher than AAA and less of an adjustment is needed.

Strasburg spent like 33 innings in AAA and Heyward never had a single AB. I mean ya.. If you're going to include the uber-prospects that are a >1% representation of the league as a whole, you would be competitive in the NL.
Thats precisely the function of AAA. To serve as a buffer for these prospects between AA and MLB. Once they've developed into quality MLB players, they aren't AAA players anymore.
In the rare instance that you have an immediate star like Strasburg or Lincecum thats wasting his time in AAA, ya sure. Do those count? :-)

The Yakult don't have anything remotely comparable to Felix, but I think the Yakult lineup is actually better.  They have Aoki, who is an Ichiro clone, but their surrounding hitters are better because they'll post better OBPs with comparable power (I don't think the power would translate).
They've got four or five pitchers comparable to Vargas/Fister. Depressing yes... THe Ms are really, really bad... Its close, but I do think the Ms are actually worse. The Orix would have a shot of posting only slightly below league-average OBPs, with similarly bad SLG. The pitching+defense would be similar with a slight edge to the Ms because Felix would run prime-Matsuzaka type numbers.

NPB stars are a far bigger part of the league quality though since they spend several years there.
Elite prospects are in and out and the vast majority of them aren't effective at the MLB level right off the bat. If half of them STAYED in AAA for several years, then ya the quality of AAA would rise.
All that said, I think the focus on star players is taking the discussion off course. How would a league-average AAA player do in the AL vs one from the NL or NPB?

Fair 'nouf, but then why haven't most NPB hitters faced these adjusment periods? Hitters moving from the AL to NL don't seem to be having many issues either.
You could switch the argument toward pitchers as well.
I think 90+% of it is just due to league quality. The quality of SP in the AL is eons ahead of that in AAA.

Taro's comment re: Saito is completely out of bounds.  Saito was a middle of the road STARTER in Japan...the MLB made him a dominant RELIEVER.  Some pitchers really do have very...very different results in different roles.  See: DANIEL CORTZES.
I would, however, agree that NPB pitching is not as bad as I've characterized it...although I can point to five different examples of Japanese pitching imports that busted horribly in MLB (starting with Hideki Irabu and Kei Igawa and, although he didn't pitch in Japan...Macoto Suzuki, who likely would have done fine in Japan).
I think the fact that Roberto Petagine couldn't buyu an active BENCH gig in the bigs, let alone a starting job...after routinely hitting 1.000 in Japan speaks for itself.  That is not a major league.  That is good baseball...and they play VERY good fundamentals, which makes them capable of playing tough games against superior competition in short series play (and no...I would not characterize them as having clobbered the US All Star team...the WBC games between those two squads were always close and Japan prepared for the WBC for months before playing it, whereas the US players rolled out of bed still hung over and took the field - comparatively speaking).
I stand by my assessment here...Japanese teams might be very similar to this year's Mariners...all pitching, no hitting...and not enough depth to compete in a 162 game schedule.

Sorry Taro...but you're just failing to understand Doc's point...and mine.  The league quality in AAA is not the EXCLUSIVE cause for the adjustment period for AAA hitters to the big leagues.  There are other reasons for the adjustment.  New pitchers...new coaches, new parks, and a huge jump in pressure...none of those things have anything to do with the quality of players in AAA.  Dustin Pedroia, for example, hit .186 for a month when he first got called up...are you going to try to tell me that Pedroia sucked for a month because he was an inferior player and then was awesome afterward because he improved suddenly?  Sorry...no sale.

I owned him in a keeper league at the time. It was just terrible BABIP and he pretty much hit immediately in his rookie season.
Logically those type of issues would be even bigger for foreigners crossing over to a new country. New language, new customs, new game, new pitchers, representing your coutry, etc. Yet, the NPB players almost never have an adjustment season (either than Hideki). They are what they are from Day 1 pretty much.

I agree that an average NPB team would be similar to the Mariners (maybe not quite as bad hitting) and I agree that the AL is the clear superior league to the NL.
Where I don't agree is in your assessment of AAA. I think you give AAA too much credit, and the NL/NPB not enough.
If an average team can play RL ball in the AL, than that is major league. A AAA team wouldn't come close to that. Excellent AAA players generally are RL players.

True, both Irabu and Igawa were busts, but both also were in physical decline. Igawa used to live in the 90-92 range in his prime. His average fastball over here 88-90mph. Of course Igawa had command issues and gopher issues in Japan. He was probably a mix of physical decline and a guy with a fringe skillset.
Irabu was a good old fashion bust, but another guy who was in decline. He had command issues and the velocity was already starting to decline in '96 (a year before he went over).
When Irabu went back to Japan he posted a 3.85 ERA with a 1.25 HR/9 and 9.68 H/9 as a 34 year old. He was similar to the recent Harang in the NL. The following year, he was figured out and washed out of the league. Irabu was pretty much a thrower, so the loss of velocity was a career killer. We saw the same thing happen to Bartolo Colon when he lost velocity.
In general the high gopher, poor command types don't seem to translate in the same way the poor eye, high K% guys don't translate as well. Ishii was another poor command type that didn't translate, although he wasn't in physical decline like the other two.
Theres was a guy in the NL who was a fine MOR starter for few years that wasn't really much in the NPB.. His name escapes me right now. Pitched for the Expos for a period and bounced around a bit.
And IMO Mac Suzuki was just bad and happened to be Japanese. He wouldn't have worked in the NPB. He wasn't even good in AAA.

Tomo Ohka?

that I think have to be considered regarding Japanese players.  Pitchers, in particular, have a rather difficult transition to America.  It's been a while since I read this, but if I remember correctly, Japanese pitchers typically throw every 6th day instead of every 5th and then throw 120-160 pitches before being removed.  This is probably a lot of the reason that Hideo Nomo flamed out at a relatively early age (34) and other pitchers, such as Takashi Saito and Koji Uehara play massively better as relief pitchers (and to say that all pitchers get better as relievers is true, but generally they don't go from fringe back end starters to massively dominating closers, neither Saito or Uehara have fastballs that play up to anything scary in relief like Gagne or Papelbon had/have).
As far as hitters' success has to do with Japanese players having a lower patience level (despite the general belief that Japanese umpires call a smaller strike zone).  The Americans (or players that have played in an American league) that have success in Japan typically have extremely high OBPs and SLG(it's also common knowledge that the parks are smaller in Japan which of course is most of the reason that few teams trust Japanese power hitters). 7 out of 13 Americans with OPSs above .800 in 2009 had OBPs above .350, and 10 of them had IsoPs above .060 (My guess is that most were also heavily platooned, as only 2 of the 13 players with experience in the ML had 500+ PA, and 1 of them was Tad Iguchi).
The other concept that the talent pool is smaller doesn't make much sense to me.  The NPB has about 350 players compared to a Japanese population of 120 million.  The Major League has 750 players at any given time pulling from an American population of 300 million, and then the populations of every other baseball playing country, so call it another 300 million or so.  So obviously, that makes it sound like an easy win for American baseball having a bigger talent pool, but then you have to remember; in Japan, Baseball is truly the national passtime, so that 120 million (after you subtract the women, the population over 40 and under 15) is much more likely to attempt to play professional baseball.  Compare that to the American population which has it's attentions divided much more evenly to football and basketball, as well as Hockey and Soccer.  So those eat away at the American talent pool, soccer also eats away heavily from the Central and South American talent pool, and of course, America's other source of foreign talent is Japan, which has the posting system, as well as players that never choose to leave due to national pride and perhaps a fear of failure.
So I would guess the final tally for talent pool isn't the massive 5 times larger for America that it might appear to be, but more like about double the size.

It could've been either Tomo Ohka or Masato Yoshii you're thinking of.  Both were MOR types in Japan and had some decent BOR-type years in the NL.  Yoshii was mostly with the Mets, but spent some time with the 'Spos and Ohka bounced around the NL for what seemed like forever with the most time being with the Exposés.
Heck, they even both played for the Suppositions together in 2001 and 2002.

Ya, but they don't have power anyways and the '10 Ms have an unbelievably bad offense. I think Yakult would post at least a .310 OBP.

Thank. Thats the guy. :-)

Ohka was an NPB prospect for four years and bounced back and forth through the minors, never establishing himslelf at the NPB level. Boston signed him for the minor leagues and the same year he reached the bigs. By the following year he was a good swingman and eventually established himself as a #3 SP type for a few years before giving in to age.

Ohka was, at his very best...jarrod Washburn minus a K.  The fact that he got to the big leagues quick is the typical Japanese pitcher with funky delivery has league fooled for a year syndrome...after that, he was CRAP...sorry...he just was.  He was a great example of why the NL is not a major league.

Hes was pretty decent from '02-'05. A string of 2+ WAR seasons with a 3+ WAR in '02. It wasn't just a year. Yeah, pretty much a Washburn type, but its something.
Point being, he was a fringe NPB guy that had some success.

I think AL>NL>NPB >> AAA
Just look at $$$ what the players earn.

I looked at that awhile back -- and the total NL payroll was roughly equal to the total AL payroll.
The trick there is that the NL is divided over 16 team and the AL 14.
While it's not perfectly distributed, the generalized picture is missing two "average" players per team.  What's average salary these days?  Somewhere between 2 and 3 million?
If one equates league minimum (400k) to replacement level player, then you're talking about something like each NL team is playing with 5 or 6 more replacement level players than the AL teams.  There's LOTS of different ways one could parse it.
In the end, the bulk of the difference comes down to dollars and the number of teams.  IMO, the situation will not get any better than it is currently unless/until the AL expands to 16 teams.  Even that won't solve things if the AL continues to have a 10% edge in aggregate payroll per team.