I was reading Rob Neyer's column from yesterday (http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1558124.html) and this passage kind of stuck out because of the recent discussion on whether baseball is "watered down" by the rampant expansion.

"It's possible that after years and years and years of the game getting harder and harder and harder to dominate, that process has stopped, or even reversed itself. How could this happen? Well, it could happen if a significant percentage of the greatest athletes in this country were, as children, playing soccer and basketball instead of baseball. Which is, of course, precisely what's happening."

I think this is something that is often overlooked when discussion of baseball's player pool takes place. Is the change in the sports children play balanced by the increase in foreign players? Could the fringe-players of today really be worse talent-wise than of twenty years ago?

Personally, I don't know if the player pool is alot thinner. I do think this needs to be considered when people claim that the player pool is larger than it used to be.

As far as PB's player pool, the stat difference between the stars and the scrubs doesn't really seem out of line from past stats and in a simulation such as this the stats are really all that matters.