The new CBA was supposed to help fix tanking in MLB — here’s why it hasn’t
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FOR MONTHS DURING the lockout, Major League Baseball players had a consistent gripe about the system they were attempting to change — a gripe to which fans, too, could relate. At issue is a strategy that has become commonplace in baseball: Tanking.
Popularized during World Series title runs first by the Chicago Cubs and then the Houston Astros, tanking has become an often-imitated way to rebuild. Instead of risking mediocre play that keeps a team stuck in the middle, a team will trade away veteran players and bottom out. The club will then start over with small payrolls, load up on prospects and sell fans on the future, even as the present likely consists of 100-loss seasons.
“There have been rebuilds in the past, but the cycles were much shorter,” MLBPA union subcommittee member Andrew Miller said in February. “Teams are announcing it now, telling their fans that we’re not going to compete because we’ve all come to the realization that draft picks are valuable.”
On Opening Day in Baltimore on Monday, the CEO of the Orioles said as much in a message to fans.
“Beginning in 2019, we devoted our entire company to building through the farm system in the “Oriole Way” of past eras, recently emulated successfully by other MLB clubs,” the statement from John Angelos read. “As a result, we now boast the No. 1 rated player talent pool and scouting and development system in all of Major League Baseball…When we began this journey in 2019, we expected our Minor League rebuild to take four to five years…”
It’s this admitting to not even trying to win for a period of years that has upset players during this era of rebuilding. Throughout the work stoppage, the t-word was raised in heated conversations between players and owners about the sport’s future. But how much the changes implemented in the new CBA will actually curb tanking remains to be seen.
The most significant addition is a new draft lottery system directed at making sure that clubs starting over do so in a…
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Source : espn
