Source: The Washington Post

Consider this: The MLB’s opening day rosters were 72.3% America-born and, therefore, 27.7% foreign-born. Moreover, my diligent Googling skillz have suggested that 42 million Americans play baseball — recreationally, collegiately, high schoolally, professionally, or otherwise. So, that is 7 out of every 10 MLB players coming from a stock of 13.4% of Americans (24 42 million players / 313 million Americans).

In other words, the pool for American baseball talent is large and well-tapped (because it fills the most roster spots). High school and college teams have done an excellent job of vetting young American talent, ensuring that only the best reach the minors — and then the best of the best reach the majors. Despite this considerable pool of American talent, the teams that want an edge know they cannot let the local talent satisfy their needs. Enter: East Asia.
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In sports, age is a tricky thing. Consider Delmon Young‘s 2010 season. After three seasons of mediocrity at the plate and butchery in the field, Young finally put together a productive season for Minnesota. He slugged 21 HRs and posted a career high in OBP, SLG, wOBA, and WAR. And, because he was only 24, the belief was there was nowhere to go but up – or, at the least, to a respectable career similar to Carlos Lee’s.

Yet here we are, watching a 25-year-old Young struggle through one of the worst seasons imaginable for a top-prospect stud left-fielder entering what should be the prime of his career. Through two months and change, Young has only managed two home runs. Much like the rest of his Twins’ team, his batting line is in shambles. To date, his .246 batting average is a career low, as is his .272 on-base percentage, his .316 slugging percentage and his .264 wOBA.

Were Young 28 or 29 years old, none of this would surprise. Pundits across the internet would have declared him as regression candidate number one after posting a career-high isolated power score by 50 points despite moving to Target Field, one of the toughest home run parks in the league. Nothing else was different. The poor plate discipline was still there. The good contact numbers were still there. The high BABIP was still there. The only difference between Delmon Young prior to 2009 and Delmon Young in 2010 was more pop.

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I can’t speak for the other writers here, but I can tell you one thing with certainty: I put way too much time into thinking about the FanGraphs Franchise Player Draft. Even though it was a hypothetical draft and merely a fun exercise, I found myself sweating bullets as my turn came around to pick. What’s the best strategy in this sort of draft? Should I go with upside, or with certainty? How much risk is too much risk, and how much is not enough? Gah, so many questions!

As we went through this draft, every one of us writers had to ask ourselves the exact same questions, and judging from the final results, each of us chose to answer them slightly differently. That’s one of the beautiful things in a draft like this: there’s no real “wrong” strategy (outside of selecting Chone Figgins or someone of that nature). Everyone still picked a potential franchise player — it’s just that each person’s pick can tell you a little about themselves if you look closely enough. For instance, I think Cistulli may just be one of those people that goes “All In” and then turns to his table-mate and says, “Now…what game is this again?” Go big or go home — Carson loves prospects and upside, and picking Mike Trout at #3 was living life on the wild side.

So why did I choose Carl Crawford with the #7 pick? I thought this was a potentially controversial pick at the time, but I had a very deliberate, thought-out reason for selecting Crawford. Let me explain.

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Former Milwaukee, Colorado, Cleveland, St. Louis, Washington, and Los Angeles infielder Ronnie Belliard announced his retirement yesterday. This probably won’t garner too much attention. That is understandable, as Belliard was mostly an unspectacular player at a position that is perhaps the most frequently overlooked. This isn’t a “Belliard was a hidden superstar” post, but he was somewhat underrated, and he certainly had his moments.

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Hold on to your you-know-whats.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Previews of varying sizes for these four games: Florida at Philadelphia (Game Two), Florida at Philadelphia (Game One), San Diego at Colorado, and Boston at Tampa Bay.

2. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games.

3. Some free association, and then some association that’s actually kinda expensive.

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Evaluating trades is one of the most fun aspects of baseball analysis. The best evaluations often are made at the time of the trade, based on perceived mindsets of the teams involved and on the information available at the time the deal was conceived. Hindsight makes things easier, but often winds up with less accurate assessments. Still, taking another look after a couple of years can be an interesting exercise, especially when players involved in the original deal moved to new teams.

Suddenly, one move can impact the roster of four or five different teams depending on the eventual destinations of the players involved. One recent deal involved the Florida Marlins sending all-stars Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers for Andrew Miller, Cameron Maybin, Burke Badenhop, Mike Rabelo, Dallas Trahern and Eulogio De La Cruz. Though the latter four players have their merits, the December 2007 deal was really two of the top prospects in baseball for Cabrera and the ability to not have to pay Willis.

Three years later, the Marlins essentially unloaded a hall-of-fame player for three middle relievers — as both Maybin and Miller are on new teams and only one of the original players acquired remains on the major league club.

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In Part Two of the 1980s pitching roundtable, the panel discusses pitching inside, and the strike zone. Part One appeared yesterday.

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1980s PITCHING ROUNDTABLE [Part Two]: BUD BLACK, DANNY DARWIN, MIKE FLANAGAN, GREG MADDUX, JON MATLACK AND BOB WALK.

ON PITCHING INSIDE TO INTIMIDATE HITTERS:

Bud Black: I don’t know if “intimidate” is the right word; I don’t know if there’s more. I think there’s still as much pitching inside today as there was, but back then there wasn’t as much hullabaloo if you did. Now the hitters make a bigger deal of it. You didn’t have that same reaction back in the ‘80s.

Danny Darwin: I think that pitchers pitched inside more in the 80s than they do today and a lot of that stems from if you throw a ball inside today, it seems like you get a warning. The players policed the game themselves back then. At least for me, I don’t know if the guys were maybe more hard-nosed, but you know — you have brawls nowadays, but back then the players policed themselves. We hit a guy, you hit a guy, and it’s over with. I think it’s just the nature of the game.

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With three weeks remaining until FanGraphs Live makes its west coast debut, I wanted to remind you guys about the fun we were going to have on Thursday, July 7th. We’re proud to be teaming up with SABR to host an event at the same location as their national convention, giving you the chance to take your baseball nerdery to a whole new level.

Our event will take place from 7 to 10 pm, and include three interactive panel discussions:

Jon Weisman (Dodger Thoughts), Eric Stephen (True Blue LA), and Rich Lederer (Baseball Analysts) will answer questions and converse on the status of the two local teams, so we’ll begin the evening with an interesting look at the Dodgers and Angels. You will have a chance to ask questions of the panelists, as well as hear them talk about the various topics surrounding those two franchises.

After the local teams panel has concluded, we’ll transition slightly into looking at the national landscape and the game as a whole, and will bring Rob Neyer (SB Nation) and Vince Gennaro (President of SABR, author of Diamond Dollars, consultant to MLB teams) into the discussion. We’ll talk about what we’ve seen during the first half of the 2011 season, as well as some of the more interesting aspects of the current landscape of statistical analysis of the sport. I’m sure Jonah Keri will also promote his book once or fifty times during this panel.

Finally, we’ll have a FanGraphs-centric Q&A with members of our staff, including the aforementioned Mr. Keri, David Appelman (President of FanGraphs), Carson Cistulli (NotGraphs specialist), Eno Sarris (RotoGraphs wizard), and myself. There’s also rumors that Patrick Newman (JapanGraphs expert) might make an appearance.

The event should be a blast and well worth the $20 admission fee. However, the goodness doesn’t end there – anyone who registers for FanGraphs Live is eligible to use the FGNonMember-41 discount code when registering for the SABR convention. That code will give you 15% off any conference registration, whether it is a one day pass ($59, pre-discount), two day pass ($93, pre-discount), or full conference registration ($159, pre-discount). Those of you who are good at math will take note that the registration discount for the full conference is actually more than the cost of attending FanGraphs Live, so if you’re planning on registering for SABR as a non-member, it is actually cheaper to register for our event and then use the discount code than to not attend our event.

Even if you can’t make the whole weekend, however, I’d highly recommend at least a one day pass if you can get away from work. There are a lot of interesting things planned for July 7th, and if you can’t get enough of me on discussion panels, I’ll be participating on a baseball media panel with Russ Stanton (Editor of the LA TImes), Sean Forman (Owner of Baseball Reference), and Bill Squadron (General Manager of Bloomberg Sports) in the afternoon, and Scott Boras will be giving the keynote speech in the morning. You could spend the whole day geeking out about baseball, and no one there would judge you.

You can purchase tickets by using the widget below. We look forward to seeing you guys in three weeks.

Just like the NL crop this afternoon, let’s take a look at where the AL voting would leave us as of today, and then I’ll give my picks below.

Catcher: Russell Martin
First Base: Adrian Gonzalez
Second Base: Robinson Cano
Shortstop: Derek Jeter
Third Base: Alex Rodriguez
Left Field: Josh Hamilton
Center Field: Curtis Granderson
Right Field: Jose Bautista
Designated Hitter: David Ortiz

The moral of this story? There are too many Yankees fans currently occupying the planet. Also, they have a lot of money and some pretty good players. That said, if I were picking the team, the line-up would be significantly less Yankee-centric, and I think most of us could agree that that would be a great thing.

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