Who really knows? But MLB baseball looks different to me today than it did just a few years ago.
“Tanking”—the talk of the NBA these days—is an anathema to Major League Baseball. Right? Well, perhaps not.
Mark Deeks of SBNation defines tanking this way: “It’s a concerted effort…to not be as good as a team could be….“Deliberately losing…becomes… a strategic decision.” How so? It’s to get an advantage in the league draft.
“Tanking?” (photo, Orlando Sentinel)
Things got to a boiling point in the NBA a few months ago when Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, talked about tanking on a podcast: “I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option.’”
“(NBA) Commissioner Adam Silver would hate hearing that,” Cuban concluded. And Cuban was right. Silver fined him $600k for endorsing the practice.
While tanking is a problem in the NBA, it hasn’t been talked about much in MLB—at least until now.
There are two reasons why the situation has changed. First, there’s escalating players’ salaries. Second, there’s how the Houston Astros went from worst to best in baseball.
USA Today reports that the average MLB player will earn over $4.5 million dollars this season and that 130 players will earn over $10 million bucks. But paying big money doesn’t always lead to championships.
Courtesy: New York Post
Consider the Detroit Tigers. Former GM Dave Dombrowski used players in his farm system to secure established stars, and he also signed big-time free agents. Those practices brought Scherzer, Price, Céspedes, Kinsler, Upton, Fielder, and others to Detroit, but it also put the Tigers’ payroll near the top of MLB salary list. It didn’t catapult Detroit to a championship, either.
After the team dumped Dombrowski, the Tigers went in a drastically different direction– moving almost all of their stars, save Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez, in exchange for less expensive options. The intent? Reduce the payroll, shore up the depleted farm system, and build for the future through youth.
Are other clubs following the same path? Perhaps. Consider the unusually tepid free agent market this past off-season. By February 1 of this year—just a few days before Spring Training started—there were still 100 free agents on the market, including a number of high-profile players, like Hosmer, Darvish, Arrieta, and J.D. Martinez.
But before drawing a conclusion about what that means, let’s keep in mind that MLB isn’t just a sport, it’s a business. It’s often difficult to determine intent when a club cuts payroll. Is it primarily a business move? A tanking strategy? An ongoing need?
Courtesy: Fox News
What we do know, for sure, is that the Houston Astros went from worst to first by selecting and grooming young players. Houston lost over 100 games in each of three consecutive years (2011-13)—and nearly made it four with 92 losses in ’14. But the Astros’ approach paid off. Houston won 101 regular season games last year and capped off the season by claiming a World Series title.
It’s too soon to say whether an urge to reduce big payrolls—when combined with a newly-found preference for building from the grassroots—represents a paradigm shift in MLB. But what we do have today are two tiers of MLB clubs.
Tier 1 includes teams that are very active in the trade and free agent markets—the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Cubs, Braves, Brewers, Phillies, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Dodgers, most prominently. All of those teams—save the Dodgers with injury issues—are at or near the top of their respective divisions.
Clubs in Tier 2 are losing and losing big. In fact, losing seems to be the new norm in major league baseball. Jarod Diamond of The Wall Street Journal reports that six—and possibly seven—teams are on track to record 100-loss seasons this year—the Orioles, White Sox, Reds, Royals, Marlins, Padres, and possibly Rangers. What makes that news? Only one MLB team lost 100 games during the previous three seasons.
Chisox GM Rick Hahn (photo, Chicago Tribune)
Clearly, this isn’t baseball as usual and that’s why questions are being raised about tanking.
Consider how ChiSox GM Rick Hahn described the situation to Diamond: “Perhaps there’s a greater acceptance of teams going to the southern extremes as long as there’s an understanding of what they’re trying to do for the long term. There have been successful examples in baseball and other sports, so fans understand it a little more.”
Hahn’s indirect language suggests that tanking is ok when it’s the basis of a long-term strategy to win.
Holy Adam Silver!
I’m not quite sure where all of this will settle, but MLB looks different to me today than it did just a few years ago.
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This article was also published in the Journal-Herald, May 17, 2018.
