The International All-Star Teams

“The National Pastime.” Baseball’s been called that for over a century now, but the motto needs a qualifier. While the game is originally American (if we finesse the precursor games that came over from England) and may speak to something particularly American, it is by no means uniquely American. Many other countries have embraced baseball, some with a passion that matches the greatest mania baseball fever ever reached in the United States.

So how good are these countries at baseball in relation to each other? The periodic World Baseball Classic purports to answer this question, but a tournament lasting from three to eight games for its participants doesn’t exactly provide a long baseline. We’re left with methods more subjective—but given the range they allow for hot-stove debate, that’s going to be as much fun as baseball games.

Yes, it’s time to make up some All-Star teams.

Full disclosure before I proceed: When this article idea was in its early stages, David Laurilia at FanGraphs beat me to one punch by posting his all-time Cuban team (for the eight positions, DH, lefty and righty starters, and closer). I hereby acknowledge (and link) his work, even as I do my own version. I even chose one different starter, so we can start the fun arguments early!

Every country with enough major league players born on its soil to form a team gets consideration. Drawing the line at major league players is a regrettable restriction but a necessary one. Our means of statistically comparing players in the majors are shaky enough; trying to include those who never got to perform in the bigs takes away any pretense at certitude.

Besides which, using only major league players makes it feasible to track everyone down. Scouring Japan’s pre-war rosters or figuring out who came from where in the Negro Leagues would take years. I’ve got deadlines to meet.

Now, what constitutes a team? I could be lazy and draw the line at nine players, due to an obscure section of the rulebook. (Rule 1.01, I believe.) Instead, I’m going with the standard major league roster size of 25 players. If I’m summoning up All-Star teams in my imagination, it’s a pity to have them play just one game, or a handful like the WBC. If you’re dreaming, dream big—162 games big. And if you think forming fewer teams isn’t avoiding laziness, the full 25-man rosters may persuade you otherwise.

There are 11 countries outside the United States that have had at least 25 players in the majors. Matters of definition, which I will get to in the course of this article, will impel me to add a 12th entity. This group ends up conveniently separating into three even divisions based on the strengths of the teams one can put together from its players—or whether a viable team cam be formed at all.

The Pretenders

For example, Australia has 28 natives who have made the bigs, enough to field a full roster. However, 19 of those 28 have been pitchers exclusively. Of the nine available position players, just one ever played at catcher, and Dave Nilsson spent only half of his eight years primarily behind the dish. Make him catch every inning his team played, and he’d implode by May (as would almost anyone). Playing with one substitute available for the field may have worked for the Cincinnati Red Stockings of the 1860s, but not for the all-Australia team, even in a fantasy.

Ireland produced 47 big-league players, and you can assemble a functional 25-man roster from them. On the mound, you have more than 500 career wins between Tony Mullane and Tommy Bond, though no other pitchers have a career winning record. (One possible back-ender is John Tener, who later would serve as governor of Pennsylvania and president of the National League—at the same time!) They won’t lack for catchers like Australia, as 15 Irish natives had that as their primary position. Sufficient candidates exist to fill the other spots, though seldom with names you would know.

Therein lies a problem, in more ways than one. Most Irish big-leaguers played in the 19th century, with only eight beginning their careers after 1900. This makes their quality, already not the best, even more suspect. It also makes them all technically British. Every single man born in Ireland who played major league baseball was born while Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom.

Should possessions like this count for the owning country? It’s not precisely a critical question, given that baseball is not high diplomacy, but it’s certainly capable of raising tempers in people of the right nationality. I myself have both some English and Irish descent, so like Casey Stengel, I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways.

My strongest argument for consolidation is that it would let me count the Netherlands. By itself, Holland has just 12 major leaguers, utterly inadequate despite the presence of Hall-of-Famer Bert Blyleven. Count its possessions in the Caribbean, though, and the tune changes. Curacao has produced 14 big-league ballplayers, led by Andruw Jones, Andrelton Simmons, Jair Jurrjens and Kenley Jansen. Aruba has five of its own, including pitcher Sidney Ponson and promising shortstop Xander Bogaerts.

Making a functioning team of them, unfortunately, is dicey. There would be only 11 pitchers, several not really of major  league quality. Put together some hybrid rotation that lets Blyleven go every fourth day—he had eight seasons over 270 innings, so he can hack it—find a bridge to Jansen, and things might hold together. The infield would work much better, though we’d need to slide Bogaerts to third and Holland’s Didi Gregorius to second.

But then there’s John Otten. I’d never heard of him either. He played 26 games in 1895 and is, sadly, the only major league catcher from Holland or its possessions. Sorry, Bert, but the Dutch team goes the way of the Aussies.

This leaves the separatist case, one beginning with Panama. Panama can boast two truly great players, Rod Carew and Mariano Rivera. The wrinkle with Carew (and three other Panamanian players) is that he was born on American soil: the Panama Canal Zone, which was at the time a U.S. territory. Can the Stars and Stripes claim Carew?

Can, yes, but there are two arguments why the U.S. should not. One is that, placed in the American pool, Carew would not end up on the all-American team. Second base is clogged with Rogers Hornsby, Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins and Jackie Robinson, and don’t even try bumping Lou Gehrig or Jimmie Foxx off first. In this exercise, an American Carew would be a wasted Carew.

Second, Carew made the choice himself. Legally entitled to claim American citizenship due to his birthplace, he has steadfastly remained solely Panamanian. I yield to his dedication. Carew is on the Panamanian team. By the transitive property, Ireland’s players win independence from the U.K., and Puerto Rico gets a separate team from the U.S. I’ll observe the Panamanians’ raised prospects a little later.

Irish rejoicing won’t last long. Apart from its top two pitchers, Ireland has a terribly weak all-time team. The British aren’t much better. The ranks of their 46 players are also heavy with the 19th century and the Deadball Era. Likely the best player on the team, and the only one ever to make the All-Star Game, is the Staten Island Scot himself, Bobby Thomson. Britain and Ireland may have been better off together.

(And let’s not even get into breaking up the U.K. into England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. At that point, I’d give up and let them have cricket.)

Germany, with 42 big-league players, leans toward the early years of baseball much like Ireland and Britain, but NATO deployments during the Cold War give us a fair number of modern players born there. Starting pitching is dreadfully thin. Modern Cubs fans will blanch to find Edwin Jackson the No. 2 starter on the all-Germany team—and that’s only if we slot 19th-century wonder Pretzels Getzien above him. Guys like Glenn Hubbard and Jeff Baker would bring a bit of legitimacy, but if your team is likely to need Mike Blowers as its backup catcher (and Germany would), it’s not a serious team.

The Contenders

Panama’s in better shape, to the point where the all-Panama team could compete with regular modern-day clubs. Starting pitching again would be the sore spot. The starting rotation would begin with Bruce Chen, Randall Delgado, Juan Berenguer, and Ramiro Mendoza, the latter two of whom were primarily relievers during their careers. The back end is so weak, the team might have to send out Mariano as a spot starter and pray Manny Acosta or Manny Corpas can keep the bullpen from imploding.

The field would compensate. Carew will go to first in deference to Rennie Stennett at second. An outfield of Carlos Lee, Roberto Kelly, and Ben Oglivie would be solid if not flashy, and Manny Sanguillen would be a fine backstop with Carlos Ruiz in reserve. The left half of the infield could be sketchy. Ruben Tejada would have short, and there is no obvious third baseman. Maybe use Hector Lopez or Jose Macias, or plug in utility man Chico Salmon and hope.

This looks like an actual team, one with strengths and weaknesses. It wouldn’t dominate, any more than the Brewers of Robin Yount and Paul Molitor dominated with its two Hall-of-Famers. If its patchwork pitching staff held together, and third base didn’t become a black hole, the Panamanians would at least be in the Wild Card hunt. With its 53 players, Panama represents the lower bound of where a national all-star team can be a legitimate major league team.

The team just above Panama in major league veterans raises that bar, even with the peculiarities of its position in the baseball world.

Japan has a claim to be the second-best baseball power on Earth, and its standing in major league baseball surely undersells this strength. Many of Japan’s greatest players have never played a game in North America, and those who come over nowadays generally do so after spending prime years in Nippon Pro Baseball. Gauging how strong an all-Japan team would be solely by its players’ major league performances is problematic, but those are the ground rules I set.

For once, pitching won’t be a problem. Of the 61 Japanese natives in the majors, 43 have been pitchers. The trick is whether to favor short-term excellence, like that of Yu Darvish and Hisashi Iwakuma, or to lean toward those with more ordinary numbers in longer stints, like Hideo Nomo and Hiroki Kuroda. Given that Japanese players have to excel for some time in NPB before getting the chance to cross the Pacific, I lean toward the short-timers as having paid their dues, if invisibly to their major league stat sheets.

Japan’s outfield should be fine, patrolled by Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, and… Dave Roberts? U.S. military deployments have their effect again: Roberts was born on Okinawa, and that counts. Infield is the problem, from third around to first. Matsui might have to be shifted there, with maybe Nori Aoki or Kosuke Fukudome taking his place. Kenji Johjima would be catcher, but his lone backup would be eight-game big-leaguer Keith McDonald. (Those American servicemen get around, don’t they?)

It’s still a promising team, largely from its downright scary pitching staff. If they had Sadaharu Oh at first and Eiji Sawamura taking his turn in the rotation, the Japanese would be creeping toward dynastic status. That is outside the scope of this already fanciful study, and setting actual levels for how well they would do in the current major league  environment is more speculative still.

For the next two slots we come back home, or very close. The nations on America’s borders, Mexico and Canada, arrive on the list, Canada perhaps surprisingly with the wide 244 to 114 advantage in major league players. Proximity, however, does not translate to a leap in team quality.

The Mexican talent pool is pitching-heavy, with 66 of its 114 players full-time hurlers. That deep scoop doesn’t pull in the first-rank talent it might, though. Tops on the list is Fernando Valenzuela, good and even great until the workhorse strain broke him down, but not exactly a jackpot name. For a No. 2 starter, you’re probably looking at Teddy Higuera, another high-peak pitcher who broke down. After him, it’s average pitchers like Yovani Gallardo and Esteban Loaiza. That’ll fill a rotation nicely, but it won’t provide the Japan-sized scares one would have hoped.

The position players end up disappointing, too. There’s a parade of near-replacement or sub-replacement infielders: Ruben Amaro, Juan Castro, Benji Gil, Luis Gomez, Ramiro Pena, Hector Torres and the immortal Mario Mendoza. The outfield is downright flimsy, especially on offense. The biggest home run threat Mexico has in the outfield is probably Karim Garcia. The only plausible starting catcher is Alex Trevino, who had two seasons catching 100 or more games in his career.

There are bright spots like Bobby Avila at second, Aurelio Rodriguez at third, Vinny Castilla slid from third over to short, and Jorge Orta DH’ing. That and a solid pitching staff aren’t enough to compete with Japan, though the Mexicans might outlast Panama if the pitching collapsed around Mariano.

In the Great White North, pitching starts out well with Hall-of-Famer Ferguson Jenkins, but the drop-off from there is substantial. Canada moves immediately to creditable journeymen like Reggie Cleveland, Ryan Dempster and Kirk McCaskill. A worthwhile rotation gamble might be Russ Ford, who had five good-to-incredible years a century ago before a ban on the emery (scuff) ball scuppered his career in 1915. (How good are the cameras filming this fantasy league, anyway?)

Relief—with the likes of Eric Gagne, John Hiller, and Paul Quantrill—will be good or even dominant if you’re getting Gagne’s peak (enhanced as it was with something stronger than emery). At the other end of the battery, Russell Martin does nicely at catcher, with old-timer George Gibson, Honus Wagner’s longtime teammate with the Pirates, backing him up. (Gibson once caught 150 games in a 154-game schedule. If Australia or the Netherlands had had him, I would have considered letting them play with one catcher.)

The outfield won’t quite be titanic, falling off from Cooperstown contender Larry Walker in right down to Jeff Heath and Terry Puhl, backed up by Jason Bay and George Selkirk.

The middle infield is frankly a mess, full of 19th-century names like Pop Smith, Arthur Irwin and John O’Brien. The corners are better, Joey Votto handling first while Corey Koskie and Pete Ward compete for third.

The all-Canada squad ends up a pretty good team, but not really as stout as one would expect from so many players. In this respect, it mirrors Mexico’s all-timers. It might be that America’s next-door neighbors have their ballplayers recruited more broadly than other foreign countries, due to the convenience of nearness. The stars get picked up, but so do the fringier players. Scouts in other countries might leave the marginal talents alone, making those nations top-heavy in this survey. Not a dogma, just a theory.

Here, for this second quartet, I will begin listing my full all-star rosters. The parenthetical numbers by the countries’  names are how many major league players they’ve had through 2014. Starters are listed first, capped by the closer; bullpens and benches then follow. I aimed for 11 pitchers and 14 position players but deviated in a couple of cases.

If you think I goofed up, you are as free to come up with your own teams as I was to come up with mine. You are also free to skip them and head to the next section.

Contending Teams

Panama (53)	Japan (61)	Pos (15)	Mexico (114)	Canada (244)
Rod Carew	Hideki Matsui	1B	Erubiel Durazo	Joey Votto
Rennie Stennett	Tadahito Iguchi	2B	Bobby Avila	Pop Smith
Ruben Tejada	Kazuo Matsui	SS	Vinny Castilla	Arthur Irwin
Hector Lopez	Akinori Iwamura	3B	Aurelio Rodriguez	Corey Koskie
Carlos Lee	Ichiro Suzuki	LF	Mel Almada	Jeff Heath
Roberto Kelly	Dave Roberts	CF	Alfredo Amezaga	Terry Puhl
Ben Oglivie	Norichika Aoki	RF	Karim Garcia	Larry Walker
Manny Sanguillen	Kenji Johjima	C	Alex Trevino	Russell Martin
Carlos Ruiz	Keith McDonald	C2	Geronimo Gil	George Gibson
Bruce Chen	Hisashi Iwakuma	SP	Fernando Valenzuela	Ferguson Jenkins
Juan Berenguer	Yu Darvish	SP	Teddy Higuera	Ryan Dempster
Ramiro Mendoza	Hiroki Kuroda	SP	Esteban Loaiza	Kirk McCaskill
Randall Delgado	Hideo Nomo	SP	Ismael Valdez	Rich Harden
Humberto Robinson	Daisuke Matsuzaka	SP	Yovani Gallardo	Russ Ford
Mariano Rivera	Koji Uehara	CL	Joakim Soria	Eric Gagne
Manny Corpas	Tsuyoshi Wada	P	Oliver Perez	Reggie Cleveland
Manny Acosta	Kazuhiro Sasaki	P	Joakim Soria	John Hiller
Ed Acosta	Takashi Saito	P	Armando Reynoso	Paul Quantrill
Carlos Maldonado	Hideki Okajima	P	Jorge de la Rosa	Rheal Cormier
Rafael Medina	Akinori Otsuka	P	Aurelio Lopez	John Axford
Webbo Clarke(P)	Munenori Kawasaki(IF)	Sub	Ruben Amaro Sr.(IF)	Brett Lawrie(IF)
Jose Macias(IF)	Tsuyoshi Nishioka(IF)	Sub	Benji Gil(IF)	Pete Ward(UT)
Chico Salmon(IF)	Kosuke Fukudome(OF)	Sub	Ramiro Pena(IF)	Justin Morneau(1/D)
Omar Moreno(OF)	So Taguchi(OF)	Sub	Jorge Orta(UT)	George Selkirk(OF)
Adolfo Phillips	Tsuyoshi Shinjo	OF	Carlos Lopez	Jason Bay

The Powerhouses

The top four countries in the survey are all from the Caribbean basin. Their presence and their strength underscore just how vital a baseball hotbed this region is today. (I originally typo-ed “hotbed” as “hitbed.” I guess you might call it that, too.) One could start a nice raging argument by proposing that the Caribbean countries are producing more baseball talent per capita today than America is. Throw in the Netherlands Antilles, and I might take the affirmative in that debate.

First of the quartet is Cuba, another country whose true baseball strength is likely undersold by the 186 players in the major league ranks. With segregation on one end and the anti-Castro embargo on the other, Cuban stars have had plenty of roadblocks on their path to the bigs. The recent rising flow of talent off the island is bringing them back to prominence, perhaps setting the stage to expand Cuban representation in the Hall of Fame past the country’s current lone member, Tony Perez. (The Veterans Committee keeps passing on the chance to induct Minnie Minoso, Tony Oliva or Luis Tiant, to the dismay of a good swath of fans.)

Cuba has only a few more pitchers than Mexico, but its all-timer ranks are more solid. Leading the way is El Tiante himself, with strong backing by Mike Cuellar and Dolf Luque. (Don’t let Luque’s pedestrian 194-179 record draw your eye off his career 118 ERA+.) There’s plenty of talent for the back of the rotation, and the cutesy choice—brothers Livan and Orlando Hernandez—might be the right one. Jose Fernandez may force himself into the rotation in a couple years, but let’s hold off until he finishes his rehab.

The field is even richer in talent, and also rich in versatility. Would you start Tony Perez or Rafael Palmeiro at first base? Perez could handle third when he was young, so maybe he slides across. Or maybe Leo Cardenas takes it, since his cousin Bert Campaneris owns shortstop. (Then again, Campy can famously play anywhere.) If we moved Palmeiro to DH, that wouldd take Jose Canseco out of his natural spot. He could handle a corner, but Minoso and Oliva have those. And it’s not like he’ll muscle into the Jose Cardenal/Tony Gonzalez fight over center.

This comic domino-theory tableau serves to show how strong the Cubans are at a great many positions, even excluding active talents like Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig and Alexei Ramirez. The only true weakness is catcher. Your best choices there are Jose Azcue for fair competence or Yasmani Grandal for youthful promise. Since Grandal switch-hits, you can do some platooning and wring added value out of the position.

Cuba is darned good, and pretty darned deep. This is the first team in this rundown that feels like it could dominate in the majors league today. One wonders how good Cuba would be if all itsr players were free to play in America—and a couple days after I wrote that in my initial draft, circumstances arose where we might soon find out.

As far as the all-time team goes, though, that could be a mirage. It’s the most outstanding Cuban players, the top of the pyramid, who have been most motivated to defect. Access to the whole population might not strengthen the top tiers, and thus the all-Cuban team, that much. The question must remain speculative for a while longer.

Were Puerto Rico an independent entity rather than a U.S. commonwealth, it would have the fourth-most major league  players of any country, at 246. The Ireland precedent set earlier means I will be counting Puerto Rico as though it were, and a good thing, as it makes up one of the more interesting teams.

The island doesn’t churn out pitchers: Fewer than one third of its major leaguers pitched. It shows in the quality, with Javier Vazquez the closest thing to a staff ace. (The deeper stats like him a lot more than won-lost and ERA+ do.) The bullpen may play up more, anchored by Roberto Hernandez and Guillermon “Willie” Hernandez. If you can arrange to get Luis Arroyo in his famed 1961 campaign with the Yankees, all the better, though even fantasies have rules.

But the field, especially at the traditional power positions, is golden. Roberto Clemente owns right; Carlos Beltran slides over to left so Bernie Williams can play center; Jose Cruz (the elder) and Juan Gonzalez back them up. Orlando Cepeda can take left sometimes, too, whenever he’s giving Carlos Delgado a chance to play first. Roberto Alomar will drive his dad Sandy Alomar, and some others, off second. Behind the dish, Jorge Posada and Yadier Molina are fighting over who will be Ivan Rodriguez’s caddy.

Puerto Rico is rather similar to the Cuban team, with pitching not as strong but position players even more imposing. Watching this team could well be like watching the Cubans with a juiced ball, or at Coors Field. And like Cuba, this team  would likely be the class of the contemporary big leagues. Compare Puerto Rico to Canada, with virtually the same sized pool of players, and you get a better sense of how strong it really is.

Next up is Venezuela, with 321 players who have tasted play in the majors. Latin America so far hasn’t been a treasure trove of pitchers, save arguably for Cuba, but Venezuela reverses that trend. Topping the rotation is the left-right combination of Johan Santana and Felix Hernandez, two serious Cooperstown contenders. Behind them are staunch stable-mates Freddy Garcia and Carlos Zambrano, whose late-career volatility has obscured his value. There’s plenty of strength left for a fifth starter, and with Francisco Rodriguez and Ugueth Urbina anchoring the bullpen, relief is no weakness.

Get to the infield, and it’s almost embarrassing. The country is a shortstop factory. Luis Aparicio bumps Dave Concepcion off the all-time position, and leaves guys like Omar Vizquel, Ozzie and Carlos Guillen, Alex Gonzalez and plenty more out in the cold. You could shift them elsewhere in the infield, but while, say, Manny Trillo would be susceptible to displacing from second, Pablo Sandoval would be harder to move. (Oh, hiss my jokes all you want; it only makes me stronger.) Victor Martinez (the younger version) and Ramon Hernandez would split catching duty.

Outfield is the lone weakness, and only in the sense that there won’t be three outright stars patrolling it. Cesar Tovar will have center, flanked by Bobby Abreu and Magglio Ordonez. Their backups would be merely good as well. And by the way, Miguel Cabrera will have first base, unless Andres Galarraga’s presence moves him to DH. (That’s actually a toss-up.)

Not utterly dominant except perhaps at first and short, the Venezuelan team is weak virtually nowhere. The Cubans probably edge this squad in the outfield, but Venezuela’s even or better almost everywhere else. The Venezuelans  probably beat the Cubans, and likely Puerto Rico as well. They also would beat out virtually any current major league  squad.

But they wouldn’t beat the all-timers of the Dominican Republic.

The D.R. punches amazingly far above its demographic weight, with 618 big leaguers out of a population tallied in 2010 at about 9.5 million. That overachievement is famously magnified in the small city of San Pedro de Macoris. With a population of 185,255 in the last census, two percent of the nation’s total, the Dominican has produced 90 major league players, almost 15 percent of the country’s tally.

(The closest you’ll find in America may be Donora, Pa. Never as large as 15,000 inhabitants, and now smaller than 5,000, it’s produced four major league players, three of whom are pretty darned famous. Poor Steve Filipowicz, the odd man out.)

The offense for the all-Dominican team is simply terrifying. It starts at first base with Albert Pujols, the only man in this international survey who could claim to be the greatest player ever at his position. (Miguel Cabrera needs a few more good years before he can make his case.) Next to him is Robinson Cano at second, and across the diamond at third is Adrian Beltre, both with a real shot at the Hall (especially if Beltre gets to 3,000 hits). Shortstop is admittedly a step down, and a real dogfight among several contenders: Julio Franco, Tony Fernandez, Miguel Tejada and maybe even Hanley Ramirez.

The outfield is quite pumped up, and not just in a figurative sense. Sammy Sosa and Manny Ramirez have dibs on the corner spots, but their steroid-flavored past leaves a bad aftertaste. (Not that they’re the first folks on these lists to have that debit.) You might swap in Vladimir Guerrero and Felipe Alou instead, but it would cost the team some.

Luckily, Cesar Cedeno in center doesn’t have to go anywhere, and Cedeno in the early-to-mid 1970s was awfully good. Catcher isn’t a super position, but between vet Tony Pena and young gun Carlos Santana, it’s covered just fine.

Then there are the pitchers. Two clear Hall of Famers lead the rotation in Juan Marichal and Pedro Martinez. Big brother Ramon Martinez joins Pedro, as does Bartolo Colon, and my choice for the fifth starter is Johnny Cueto, whose 2012 and 2014 campaigns flashed a brilliance that deserves a spot. The bullpen is stacked, too, with the likes of Armando Benitez, Francisco Cordero, Rafael Soriano and Jose Valverde. There have been a couple of meltdowns in that group, but look back at their full careers, and the heights from which they fell.

So we have a rotation that beats out even the mighty Venezuelans and Japanese, relief so broad that Mariano Rivera at his absolute best couldn’t keep up, and position players who would measure up to the Bronx Bombers of Ruth and Gehrig or Gehrig and DiMaggio. I started off thinking it might be close at the end, but it isn’t. No foreign country can measure up to the all-time team from the Dominican Republic.

Powerhouse Teams

Cuba (186)	Puerto Rico (246)	Pos.	Venezuela (321)	Dom. Rep. (618)
Rafael Palmeiro	Orlando Cepeda	1B	Miguel Cabrera	Albert Pujols
Alexei Ramirez	Roberto Alomar	2B	Dave Concepcion	Robinson Cano
Bert Campaneris	Jose Valentin	SS	Luis Aparicio	Tony Fernandez
Tony Perez	Mike Lowell	3B	Pablo Sandoval	Adrian Beltre
Minnie Minoso	Carlos Beltran	LF	Bobby Abreu	Manny Ramirez
Tony Gonzalez	Bernie Williams	CF	Cesar Tovar	Cesar Cedeno
Tony Oliva	Roberto Clemente	RF	Magglio Ordonez	Sammy Sosa
Jose Azcue	Ivan Rodriguez	C	Victor Martinez	Tony Pena
Yasmani Grandal	Jorge Posada	C2	Ramon Hernandez	Carlos Santana
Luis Tiant	Javier Vazquez	SP	Felix Hernandez	Pedro Martinez
Mike Cuellar	Juan Pizarro	SP	Johan Santana	Juan Marichal
Dolf Luque	Jaime Navarro	SP	Freddy Garcia	Ramon Martinez
Camilo Pascual	Ed Figueroa	SP	Carlos Zambrano	Bartolo Colon
Orlando Hernandez	Jose Guzman	SP	Anibal Sanchez	Johnny Cueto
Aroldis Chapman	Roberto Hernandez	CL	Francisco Rodriguez	Francisco Cordero
Livan Hernandez	Ruben Gomez	P	Wilson Alvarez	Alejandro Pena
Predo Ramos	Omar Olivares	P	Kelvim Escobar	Octavio Dotel
Sandy Consuegra	Joel Piniero	P	Ugueth Urbina	Armando Benitez
Orlando Pena	Guillermo Hernandez	P	Rafael Betancourt	Rafael Soriano
Leo Cardenas(IF)	Luis Aquino(P)	Sub	Luis Leal(P)	Joaquin Benoit(P)
Tony Taylor	Carlos Baerga	IF	Melvin Mora	Miguel Tejada
Zoilo Versalles	Rey Sanchez	IF	Edgardo Alfonzo	Julio Franco
Tony Gonzalez	Jose Cruz Sr.	OF	Carlos Gonzalez	Vladimir Guerrero
Jose Cardenal	Juan Gonzalez	OF	Richard Hidalgo	Felipe Alou
Jose Canseco(O/D)	Carlos Delgado(1B)	Sub	Andres Galarraga(1/D)	David Ortiz(DH)

Wrap-up

Perhaps it’s anticlimactic that the best non-American all-star squad hails from the country with the most major-league players. It’s reflective of a prosaic fact: numbers tell. There are definite variations, such as Canada underperforming and Japan’s pitchers overachieving, but the accumulation of bodies can only make an all-star team better, never worse.

Naturally, this leaves the USA well on top. With over 16,000 native major league players, it’s simply in another dimension. An all-time match-up between America and the Dominican Republic would be as one-sided as the D.R. facing, say, Panama.

Look at talent density, though, and the temptation to gloat vanishes. Compare the D.R.’s 618 players to a representative U.S. sample: the state of Missouri, with 595. America leads at one position—catcher, with Yogi Berra—and is comparable in several places, but is outmatched in enough areas that it’s plain the Dominicans have the better team. Compare San Pedro de Macoris (90) with the District of Columbia (99) to see a wider gap.

This may not be a wholly fair contrast. Many Americans were playing in the early years of pro baseball, generally regarded as qualitatively inferior. The first Dominican to play big-league ball, Ozzie Virgil, debuted in 1956, so the D,R is  top-heavy in the modern era. This mitigates the disparity but doesn’t eliminate it.

One thing this exercise has done is underscore a truth that was admittedly fairly clear before. A huge part of the future of major league baseball is emerging from countries where it’s not played. The day might not be far away when major leaguers hailing from other countries could band together and beat the contemporary all-star squad of the U.S. Or could it be that they already can?

Well, that’s a topic for another time. What I’ve given you above should be ample to fuel the hot stove for a while. Just don’t get overheated in the Comments section.

References and Resources

• Baseball-Reference for the lists of players by national origin, plus the usual ample stats
• FanGraphs for vital cross-checking on career WAR values
• Wikipedia and SABR’s Baseball Biography Project for personal player details