Add new comment

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.