This might seem like a stretch to some, but I think playing extra-circular baseball-related games, both fantasy baseball and strategy-based board and computer games like ABPA and now Out of the Park Baseball, has helped me immensely with what I’m doing now in international scouting.

These games don’t relate directly to, say, spotting a batter’s ability to staying down on the ball as he swings, but in terms of some vague instinct-based judgments –a player’s value, or how his skill set compares with another– extra-curricular, stat-based baseball games do correlate.

And if you’re willing to buy that a little, and I darn well think you ought to, then hopefully you’ll allow me to slide into the organizational side a little, and write from that perspective, since that’s where I’ve put myself by recently joining an online Out of the Park baseball league.

In our league I’m the GM of the Kure Arsenal in a Japanese outfit called the League of the Rising Sun (LRS). As the story goes, the league was a fledgling Japanese league bought by a better established American one called PEBA. When the league was sold, several of the LRS franchises were in financial straits, mine being one. We’re the Florida Marlins of the league, and our collective payroll is currently just over 8 million, far behind our division rival Shin Seiki Evas’s payroll of $54.6 million. We’re just three games back of the Evas, but that’s a different story for a different day.

A Foreigner Living in a Foreign Land

As a Japanese league GM adhering to a foreign player limit, I’ve suddenly found myself in a bit of a role reversal in which I’m forced to view the non-Asian players as a commodity. I never expected this. As a foreigner who lives in Korea, and moreover someone not living in Seoul, I’m very much an outsider here because of my race. I sometimes I feel this intensely and other times not so much. Naturally, I empathize with other foreigners living in Korea be they English teachers from Australia, England or Canada, factory workers from China or Bangladesh, or on-order brides from The Philippines or Vietnam.

In terms of baseball players living and working in Korea I can understand their plight, and I’m sure they face some of the same handicaps I did as a student, teacher and now as a baseball scout. To put it mildly, their jobs are unstable and while Korean fans are quick to embrace them – as was the case last year with Lotte’s Karim Garcia as he drove the team toward its first playoff appearance in nearly 10 years – the scrutiny by the organizations themselves is that much more intense. Players are expected to produce…yesterday. If they don’t they’ll be fired or demoted, as was the case with SK’s CJ Nitkowski, who was sent to the minors after a single bad outing.

Less than half of the 16 foreign players that started 2008 on KBO rosters finished the season with the same team. This season has been even more dramatic, with four foreigners already having been cut, and two, Nitkowski and Hanwha’s Victor Diaz, that have spent time in the, um, less than glamorous Korean minor leagues. Nitkowski has already been demoted three times since the season started in April.

In the past I’ve cried foul and even racism in these circumstances, feeling foreign players were being treated like second class citizens, which, in Korea is exactly what they are. Last year, when Jacob Cruz was dumped by Samsung a month into the season because he’d only hit 2HRs despite posting a respectable .370 OBP, I was incensed. This has surfaced a couple times in Taiwan this season, mostly recently with Tim Raines Jr., who was released last week after just 15 games, despite hitting .327 and being on pace to steal 100 bases.

The Role Reversal

But as the GM of a Japanese baseball team I see foreigners in a very different light and I’ve gained some insight into how these players are viewed by their Asian teams. First of all, in my fictional baseball world, the foreign players are far more plentiful than homegrown (Japanese) players. PEBA and the LRS share the same free agent pool. Recently, when PEBA completed its amateur player draft, a number of A and AA levels were released and free for Kure to sign. PEBA is better established than the LRS and the talent level is higher, so these players are potential AAA or even pro-level free agents. In the PEBA/LRS universe we’re allowed to have as many non-Japanese players in our minor league systems as we want, but only six of them can be on the major league roster at any given time. Next year, once franchises like mine have become more stable, that number will be cut to four.

This creates an as hereto unique situation where I’m forced to account for a player’s race in determining their overall player value. Of course, for Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese teams, this has been a reality since those leagues started allowing teams to sign foreign talent. But for me, being an American and following Major League Baseball, where incorporating as many races as possible has long been the name of the game, this is quite new. In most of our minds (thankfully) the question of race went out the door when Jackie Robinson came in.

Race as the Sixth Tool

We’re talking real baseball vs. computer baseball, so a number of scenarios that involve, er, human emotion, where I might actually have to actually face and tell a 230lb. man I was cutting him because he wasn’t Japanese, just don’t come into play. Likewise, I don’t have to pay thousands of real dollars to a player who lands in my home country, behaves like he owns it, makes no effort to respect the culture or learn the language, and then still demands playing time regardless of performance. Still, the basic strategies are the same. Race becomes as important if not more important as any of the basic five tools in a player’s on-field skill set.

Suddenly, spending the resources to develop a foreign player makes less sense. Our league recently had its annual amateur draft and there were six non-Japanese players in the draft pool. One of them was a solid-fielding, lefty-hitting, catching prospect from Puerto Rico named Felix Lima. My head scout, a Japanese guy named Nobukazu Ito, had him at #12 on his draft board. I’m not sure if Ito was taking Lima’s race into account, but I sure as heck was. LRS Limatime didn’t happen until the 12^th pick of Round 3. He was clearly the best catcher in the draft at a scarce position – there were only seven eligible catchers overall. Had he been Japanese he might have been a Top 10 pick.

Since they are more plentiful and therefore easier to sign, my team has a lot of foreign players in its system. However, with 12 new draftees ready to be assigned (along with some undrafted signs) I’ll be having to trim the fat so-to-speak. The foreigners will be the first to go, and it’s especially difficult to imagine a foreign player over the age of 25 being kept in the minors. I currently have two foreign pitchers in AAA who are only there to eat innings since because two of my Japanese players are injured, and I need the extra innings in a staff of just 10. I’ll willingly overuse them and if they get hurt I’ll dump them. I just need the innings to bridge the gap between my starters and two prized relievers. The minute the Japanese players are healthy, the foreigners will likely be cut, or if they’re lucky sent to Single-A where their arms will again be overused.

Getting Jumpy

These days Diaz, who was recently recalled from the minors, is filling in at first for the injured WBC-hero Kim Tae-kyun. Diaz normally plays right field and is something of a butcher out there, and last week I happened to tune into one of Hanwha’s recent games and saw him at first. Within a few minutes he made a throwing error on an attempted double play. As the camera zeroed on the normally tough-n-stoic Diaz, he was visibly nervous. And he ought to have been. Being demoted in the KBO is the first step to being cut and often times, as was the case with Mike Johnson, whose SK Wyverns career lasted all of two appearances, players aren’t given that courtesy. Do they deserve better? Maybe. Diaz’s average recently dipped below .300, and while he’s amongst the league leaders in HRs, he also has 50 strikeouts in 142 ABs. Let’s just say he’s lucky he’s not playing for the Kure Arsenal.