It's #TankSzn
Major League Baseball has a massive, massive issue with “tanking”. We’ve talked about it before, but losing as many games as possible for years on end is a tried and true method to sustaining success over a long period of time. It will be addressed in the next CBA I’m sure, but as it sits now, losing has a lot of benefits.
The Astros did it: in the 2011-2013 seasons, they lost 106, 107 and 111 games. They completely gutted the big league roster and in 2013 operated with a payroll of $35MM (!!!).
They then went on to start winning: in 2015 they won 85 games, followed by 87 in 2016 and in 2017 won the World Series after winning 101 games in the regular season. They will win 100 games for their 3rd year in a row this year.
The Cubs also tanked: Theo Epstein was named President of Baseball Operations by the Cubs in October of 2011 and the team proceeded to lose 101 games in 2012, 96 games in 2013, and 89 games in 2014 before finally getting hot in the second half of 2015 and advancing to the NLCS. They won it all in 2016, just two years after operating with a payroll that was about $130MM less than what it is today:
The White Sox are *attempting* to do the same thing as we speak. LOL! But they’ve gutted the big league team and are entering free agency with only $23MM in payroll before arbitration. This allows them extreme financial flexibility to go out and land quality free agents to complement their core. Whether or not they do that is yet to be seen, but the process has been the same as both the Astros and Cubs thus far.
Now the Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox don’t really rebuild, they reload as the cliche says. But they’re also the exceptions, not the rule these days. Almost every team in baseball, sans the aforementioned Red Sox, Yankees and Dodgers attempt to lose and shed as much payroll as possible.
And a lot of people think it’s solely to get a higher draft pick. While that is part of the reason, and it’s obviously better to pick top 5 rather than be a middling .500ish team than pick 15, it’s also more than that.
Teams are allotted a “bonus pool” for each draft – that is each team has a set amount of money they can spend without getting taxed for overages. Per Jim Callis of MLB.com
If a team exceeds its assigned pool, it faces a penalty. Teams that outspend their allotment by 0-5 percent pay a 75 percent tax on the overage. At higher thresholds, clubs lose future picks: a first-rounder and a 75 percent tax for surpassing their pool by more than 5 and up to 10 percent; a first- and a second-rounder and a 100 percent tax for more than 10 and up to 15 percent; and two first-rounders and a 100 percent tax for more than 15 percent.
In seven years with these rules, clubs have outspent their allotments a total of 118 times but never by more than 5 percent. Twenty-three of the 30 teams exceeded their pools last year.
The whole purpose of the MLB draft is to accrue as much potential talent as possible. But not every player is high end, first few round talent. A lot of HS players taken late in rounds could develop into high end talent, 1st round type talent, but aren’t quite there yet. They need seasoning. Often time those players go to either a junior college, where they’re again eligible for the draft after 1 year, or a 4 year college where they’re again eligible after 3.
The higher pick you have in the draft, the more money you are allotted to spend. For instance if the Sox were to picked around 15 last year instead of 3, they would have had about $3.5MM less to spend on their draft picks. It’s arguably the reason they could shoot for the stars on their 2nd and 3rd round picks who would have more than likely been off to college had they not gotten paid more than their slot values.
So now that the playoff field is more or less set, a lot of teams are playing totally meaningless baseball games the next few weeks. Across the league there are only 12 teams vying in meaningful games, and they’re mostly just jockeying for seeding in the playoffs at this point. The field is more or less set aside from the AL play in game and the NL Central title. We basically know who’s going to the playoffs and who’s not at this point, and there are about 12 games left in the season for most teams.
So what is the point in winning baseball games for teams like the White Sox or Tigers? There really isn’t. As fans, our rooting interests need to be with players that will be here long term, not wins and losses itself. We want Tim Anderson to win the batting title, Moncada to keep dominating, Eloy to hit 30 home runs, etc. But it’s also within the organizations direct interest to get as high a pick as possible. Not just because we want a better player, which we obviously do, but because we want as much money as possible to sign as many quality players as possible.
Theoretically, as I said, this should be the last year this happens for the White Sox. The more they lose the last two weeks, the better. They need an abundance of depth and quality added to their pipeline and losing as much as possible over these last few weeks is unfortunately the best way to do that.