Baseball is America's pastime. No one said it better than James Earl Jones in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams.
"The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again."
With over 200 minor league clubs affiliated with Major League Baseball, the sport penetrates every corner of this country.
In order to fill these rosters, baseball's Rule 4 Draft is held each year in June.
The days leading up to the draft do not contain nearly the hype of those of the NFL or NBA.
For teams drafting toward the end of the first round, their selection may not make it to the majors for years as they progress through the minor leagues.
Also, unlike the other three major sports in America, the baseball draft can last up to 50 rounds with more than 1,500 players drafted. Contrast that to seven rounds for the NFL and NHL and only two for the NBA.
Each club employs dozens of scouts to scour the globe looking for those special players that will someday make it to the big leagues.
So which teams do the best of discovering that talent?
I went through the 2010 major league rosters of all 32 teams. I included all field players that appeared in at least 50 games, and all pitchers that made at least 10 starts or 30 appearances. The result was a roster of 763 players.
Teams were ranked by the total number of players they either drafted or signed as amateur free agents that ended up on a major league roster—whether their own or another team's.
Interestingly, only 38.7 percent of players ended up on the 2010 roster of the team that drafted them.
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