Even if we agree that teams aren't trying to lose but simply cannot compete , THERE are a number of formerly contending teams (Cubs, Nationals) who have sold off most of their "assets" in return for younger prospects and payroll flexibility. Both teams are losing most of their games; the Nats are talking about a "short" rebuild, but who knows? Other teams-Pirates, O's-seem to be constantly in rebuild mode, selling of assets as soon as they can. In the latter case, one can argue that they simply don't have the resources to compete, but that seems belied by the A's and the Rays. My impression is that you find this problematic, but you also said that it makes no sense to penalize teams by reducing their resources. So, do you think that this, ie selling off assets in mass during the season, is a problem for baseball and, if so, what would be your favored solution?
Asked by: Marc Schneider
Answered: 8/31/2021
I think it benefits the building of a fan base if you keep your best players. If MLB were to adopt some system of rewarding teams for roster consistency (a) that would not be difficult to construct, I don't think, (b) it would not meet strong resistance from the union, because players generally are not crazy about being traded in mid-season, (c) it would be easier to sell, because you're rewarding good behavior rather than punishing behavior that you don't want, which is always easier.
But fans have adjusted; I don't think fans resist shuttling of players in and out to the extent that they once did. I have developed ways to measure roster consistency, but I'm not a good enough programmer to make those things self-generate automatically, you know, so I can't develop a library to compare 1920s teams to 1950s teams to 1980s teams to contemporary teams, or to compare successful teams to less successful teams, or to study the impact of roster consistency on attendance, etc.
HeyBill, okay, you said "Teams become non-competitive not because they CHOOSE not to compete, but because they become unable to compete."
Not to be pedantic, but, what about the Nats? On July 30 they won, making it 3 out of 4, and moved to 6.5 games of first place in the very winnable NL East. They had gone 19-9 in June. They had a veteran core 1.5 years removed from the World Championship.
They had 4 players in the 2021 All Star game. Two weeks later they traded 3 of the 4, Scherzer, Turner and Schwarber. They traded their closer Brad Hand. They traded veteran SP Jon Lester, their most effective setup man, Daniel Hudson and their starting 2nd baseman, Josh Harrison. They traded their starting catcher, Yan Gomes. So four starting position players, their closer and setup man, and two starting p?SPs.
On Aug. 1, were they fielding the best team possible for that night's game? I realize this is the Monopoly game MLB has become. But you gotta try and win, no?
Asked by: OBS2.0
Answered: 8/31/2021
Yeah, well, you can choose to understand the problem, or you can keep peddling this talk-show bullshit. But you're never going to actually understand the problem unless you give this up.
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I should be more patient.
It seems to me that there are four largely distinct sets of events which tend to be badly described and jumbled together in this discussion.
The "problem" being pointed out in these two questions is that teams which (a) believe that they are in a position where they cannot make the playoffs this season, and (b) have players whose futures they cannot control because of upcoming free agency rights. . . .teams which have that combination of circumstances react to that by trading away the players they are going to lose anyway in exchange for players whose future production is less certain, but who can be part of the team several years into the future if they do develop.
This is just time/value shifting, which is something that all sensible people do. You want a new car, you could scrape the down payment together and get a new $25,000 automobile now, or you can drive the old clunker for another year, work a second job, and be in a position to afford the $35,000 car a year from now. That’s time/value shifting; it’s the same thing that the Cubs and Nationals are doing. It’s not anything to complain about. It’s just putting off having a baby until you can afford a nicer apartment; that’s all it is. It’s not a "problem". It’s intelligent management of your resources. It is recognizing the situation you are in and making the best of it. It is saying "OK, if we can’t win this year, we’ll try to win next year." For Christ’s sake, stop pretending that is some sort of a crisis; you make yourself look like a jackass. What’s the solution here? The solution is, STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT IT. Stop acting like it is some terrible problem. Stop pretending it is somehow a new thing, as if there was some golden era in the past when there were no terrible teams.
Oh; I was supposed to be practicing patience, wasn’t I? Sorry. I grew up rooting for the Kansas City A’s, who had 13 losing seasons and left town the minute they began to put a team together. I survived. The Cubs won the World Series in 2016; the Nationals in 2019. Their fans are not being mistreated because they have a bad half-season. These teams are behaving rationally. You cannot stop teams from behaving rationally, nor can you accomplish anything by punishing them for behaving rationally. When you try to legislate policies forcing people to make irrational decisions, those policies WILL backfire, 100% of the time. Don’t go there.
The second problem which gets entangled in the foggy concept called "tanking", is that, the economics of the game being what they are, there are a significant numbers of teams—ie, the Royals, the Pirates, the Padres, the Marlins—which are competing at a serious economic disadvantage with the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and a few other teams. Some of those teams have decided, perhaps correctly and perhaps incorrectly, that it is not practical for them to try to compete consistently with the wealthier teams. It’s not necessarily true; Cleveland is not inherently better positioned than Pittsburgh, nor is St. Louis inherently better positioned than Kansas City, nor is Tampa Bay inherently better positioned than Miami, nor is Oakland inherently better positioned than San Diego. Yet Cleveland, St. Louis, Tampa Bay and Oakland DO compete consistently.
The Tampa Bay Rays vacuum up every percentage and every bit of wasted talent that they can find, and put those little edges together to win a good number of games with a team that lacks the spine and muscle that normally identifies a competitive team. The Kansas City Royals took an opposite approach, husbanding their resources and synchronizing their timelines to put together a traditional championship team, even though they could only hold it together for a few years.
My point is, there are different ways to think about how to compete with limited resources. Some teams are well run; other teams are not as well run. THIS IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The problem is that the current economic structure of baseball makes it difficult for many teams to compete.
This has been the case through most of baseball history. How do you think the Yankees got Babe Ruth? They bought him. How do you think they got Joe DiMaggio? There was a bidding war, and they won. They had more money than the other teams. Economic inequality leads to unequal results. It has always been that way.
The problem of teams having greatly unequal opportunity to win has always been there. Sometimes it gets better; sometimes it gets worse. Right now it is pretty bad.
The fact that this problem is ground into the history of the game does not mean that we have to accept it. There is a simple principle that would help greatly. The principle is: when two teams play a baseball game—or any sporting event. When two teams arrange a sporting event and the rights to broadcast that event are sold, both teams share equally in the profits.
That doesn’t mean that the Yankees and the Royals come out even. Let us say that the broadcast rights for Team A generate $1 billion a year, and the broadcast rights for Team B generate $10 million a year, a hundred-to-one ratio. Team A keeps $500 million, and puts $500 million into a fund to be divided among the teams they have played, proportional to the games played. Team B keeps $5 million, and puts the other $5 million into a fund to be divided among the opposition. Team A still comes out far ahead, but the ratio changes from 100 to 1 to something more like 5 to 1.
An inequitable allocation of resources among competing teams is not a good thing. It is a inevitable nuisance. It’s a problem. Baseball should mitigate that problem to the extent that it can be done.
The third type of team that gets entangled in the vague spidery web of "tanking" is teams which make no effort to win, but merely cash the checks that are attached to owning a major league team. Not literal checks, of course; well, some of them are literal checks. You COULD own a team, make no effort to build a team, even over a period of years, and profit from the ownership as the value of the franchise increases. But what team has actually done that? Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, certainly has not done that. He has owned the team for 28 years. His problem is not that hasn’t tried; his problem has been stupidity. He gave Chris Davis $161 million. It was stupid. But it wasn’t "not trying to win."
There is no team you can point to that, over a period of years, has not tried to win, within their resources. And there is a fourth category, semi-included here, which is teams which lose on purpose today in order to improve their chances of winning in some future year, years from now. But nobody is going to do that, for a simple reason. You’ll get fired before you win. Nobody wants to get fired.
I don’t believe in tanking. I don’t believe it makes sense, I don’t believe anybody is doing it. This much of it is true: that there are some teams that make little effort to win right now because they know that they can’t, so they only do the things that will help them to win sometime in the future.
It would be better for baseball if all teams were in an economic position such that they could compete every season. That would be a better world. It is not the real world; it wasn’t the real world in 1935, or 1955, or 1975, or 1995. There are teams which are not strong enough or not smart enough to stay in the hunt. But that isn’t tanking. It is not a betrayal of faith with the fans. It is a natural consequence of the economic disparities within the game.