As seems to be the trend in the past few years, more and more MLB players are coming from overseas. Earlier in the month, the Pittsburgh Pirates became the first team to sign two Indian pitchers and now the Boston Red Sox will be welcoming another Japanese pitcher to their roster. Junichi Tazawa, the fantastic amateur league pitcher in Japan, is reported to have signed with the Boston Red Sox. This will give them their third Japanese player.

Perhaps they’ve finally found out the reason that they’ve been struggling all these years. The Pittsburgh Pirates have recently brought on two new pitchers from overseas. However, they’re not Japanese or Chinese pitchers, instead, the Pittsburgh Pirates are now the first team to employ Indian pitchers on their squad. Both Rinku Singh and Dinesh Kumar Patel were drafted to the Pirates after winning the Million Dollar Arm competition in India last year to find the strongest and most accurate arm in the country. Let’s see how those arms do in the US…

The AL MVP is all the news today. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia of the Boston Red Sox won the award this afternoon. The voting was, apparently, not even really close and he had to delay his vacation with his wife for a few days just in case this happened. He was last years AL Rookie of the Year and his team won the World Series last year as well.  In other words, according to ESPN, his trophy case must be starting to get a little full. He certainly deserves it but it is getting a little tiring for the rest of us to watch Boston Red Sox players winning everything all the time. It is, however, good to see a player that really deserves the award, rather than just some very popular, but not particularly talented player.

The Cy Young Award was given out this afternoon to Brad Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants.  He edged out CC Sabbathia, Johan Santana and other pitchers to win the award that represents the best pitchers of each year.  Congratulations to him.  It’s kind of too bad that he plays for San Francisco, however, because that team just isn’t very good these days.  Even with a Cy Young winning pitcher, the teams needs some much stronger retooling before they can start moving up.  But anyway, congratulations to him again!

In March of 2009, the World Baseball Classic will once more take the stage. But for right now, important qualifying matches are being played. Of all the standout teams this year, Cuba seems to be the powerhouse team. They, experts predict, will be THE team to beat. The 2009 team is quite reminiscent of the 2006 team that played so well. Get all your World Classic news at MLB.com.

The Milwaukee Brewers would like nothing better than to keep pitcher CC Sabbathia into next season.  Sabbathia has filed for free agency this year and is free to negotiate with other teams.  He will, however, soon receive an offer from the Brewers, which will certainly be worth several million dollars.  It’s not yet known for sure what it’ll be.  They got him in early July from Cleveland for four top prospects.  He is an ace that got them some big wins down the stretch this year, which is something that the teams needs greatly.  The Brewers made it to the postseason for the first time in over 20 years but got beaten by the Phillies, who won the World Series.