MLB Owners Concerned About Tanking

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Ira: Why did “rebuilding” suddenly become “tanking”?

Dave Cameron: Because the CBA is up in a few months, and there’s a deep divide between big-revenue owners and small-revenue owners. The teams with money are using the media to try and steer the message, and they’re aiming their sights on changes that would benefit themselves.

Teams should be trying to be good for as long as they can. Since sports are zero sum, that means several teams at a time are going to be in a spot where they have very little hope of being good in the short term. Those teams are best served by using their resources(this phrase is very important) to be good beyond the short term. The 2012 Cubs and the 2015 Phillies did that, their talent level meant they had basically zero chance to be immediately competitive, and they put a plan in place to be better than that. The Cubs spent money on guys who helped the MLB team before being traded, they spent as big in international FA and the draft as they could, they even tried to sign guys who would still be good when that competitive time came(thanks for nothing Edwin Jackson).

The Astros are closer to the 'not using their resources' threshold because of how comically low they dropped their payroll, and without much true purpose. It was being bad for being bad's sake, and the results(162 wins in 3 years) were an order of magnitude worse than other teams.

If you want a team that should be reined in for tanking, look no further than the Marlins. It's not even a secret and they do very little to hide how disinterested they are in winning. The Mets of all teams are actually not far from this with how their ownership is refusing to spend money(even on a WS team!) because of stinginess/financial ruin.

All in all, 'tanking' is a word to stir up emotions when the real 'problem' is not that severe. Tweak the incentives to make sure teams that who have no immediate hope still make an effort to win games(lottery the top 5 draft picks, make draft/IFA pools identical for all non-playoff teams, etc), but let's leave behind the moralizing rhetoric when teams are legitimately trying to make themselves better(and give them room to not be flawless in that regard). Save that scorn for those that truly deserve it, like Loria.

[go birds]

the problem with the lottery system is that is can be fixed (see the NBA).

Imagine if the yankees and rays are in a lottery for that first overall pick.

The yankees are coming away with that pick every single time.

"Baseball is better when the Yankees (or cubs/redsox) are good."

[Hoot45]

The point about the definition of tanking versus rebuilding is a fair one. I have no issue with rebuilding while I take great issue with tanking, even if there is a lot of gray area between them, and I probably don't have a good definition myself for either. I certainly don't have a vision for what responsible rebuilding might look like in a way that it isn't just tanking, but I do know that as more teams elect 3+ year rebuilds with no effort to even entertain, my desire to be an MLB STH dramatically decreases. You start getting a lot of skippable series on your schedule.

[Jocephus]

Don't credit tanking for the success of Cubs and Astros

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/ ... and-astros

[JoeMcKim]

If every team is trying to win well someone has to finish in last place, it's impossible to have a 5 way tie for division winner.

[haltz]

Tanking is being intentionally worse in the present for future gain. If the Cards are 9 games out and trade Rosenthal for prospects then that's tanking.

The Cubs did that on steroids for three years. Every present asset was a sunk cost that was traded for future wins. Certainty for risk and often much more future value. The draft picks pale in comparison to the dry powder and player trades.

It's a little off-putting when they're still selling tickets, but they were trying to win. It's not as if it was a Loria revenue sharing scam.

[UK]

Although it'll never happen, I've been a proponent of a salary cap and a salary floor.

[pioneer98]

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/mlb- ... ing-040516

However you view the question of whether certain teams are tanking as opposed to rebuilding, one thing is certain:

The collective-bargaining agreement has created growing incentives for teams to lose as many games as possible and land the No. 1 pick in the amateur draft.

Case in point: The rising disparity in the assigned values of draft picks, as vividly demonstrated by the widening gulf between the Nos. 1 and 10 slots during the five years of the current CBA.

That's right -- the No. 1 pick is even more valuable than it was at the start of the agreement, an incentive that baseball needs to curb if not eliminate it entirely in the next CBA.

The assigned value for the No. 1 pick this year is $9.02 million, according to figures distributed to teams by Major League Baseball. The assigned value for the No. 10 pick is $3.38 million.

[pioneer98]

Actually, this goes even further. The disparities between each of the first four picks -- approximately $1.25 million per slot -- are much greater than the ones that follow, incentivizing clubs to finish in the bottom four.

The assigned values reflect industry revenues and have increased by a set percentage in each year of the CBA, creating the progressively larger gaps and giving teams with high picks a distinct advantage.

Baseball assigns each club an overall pool number based on the combined value of its selections in the first 10 rounds. Teams that exceed their pool numbers are subject to penalties ranging from a tax to a forfeiture of picks the following year.

The higher a team picks, the larger its pool. The larger a team's pool, the greater its ability to manipulate the draft.

[Famous Mortimer]

Although it'll never happen, I've been a proponent of a salary cap and a salary floor.

As long as there's a profit cap for the owners to go along with it, I agree.