Tanking in Baseball is Dumb

In basketball and Football, you get a couple of high picks and you are back in the playoffs. For years now, teams have figured if they weren't making big enough waves, just stop making any waves at all. A few bounces of the ping pong balls, the right QB comes out of college at the right time and the shitty teams turn into contenders. Baseball, however, has a strange quandry. The most recent MLB trend is for bad teams to get worse and hope they get lucky in the draft. This is a failed logic that leads fans to abandon teams and makes a mockery of the game.

The MLB is one of the only sports where you can try to win a world series every year even while building your prospects. It takes years for prospects to make it to the big leagues, even if you are picking with a top five pick. There are just as many second round picks, third round picks, and people who didn't get picked at all that become stars as there are first round pick all stars. For every Carlos Correa that went to an Astros team that was tanking, there are the Brien Taylor's of the world who were can't miss prospects. Mark Appel wasn't a difference maker. Albert Pujols was a late round pick. Teams are built with organizations. They start winning traditions in the lower levels. You draft deep and you draft well. You develop your players. You develop your coaches. This is how winning organizations develop. They have players to replace players. Someone gets hurt, someone slumps, some decides to go to another town, there is another man up. One player doesn't make this. Even if it is Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa, or Kris Bryant.

How have the high picks helped the Padres win. They have some great ones coming, but also could have been trying to win all along and still developed players. The Angels have over spent and tried to to win for years and that didn't keep them from still drafting and getting Mike Trout.

Teams that are trying to tank are confusing not over paying for players with losing. Don't pay players who don't perform. Pay to get the best team you can get. Develop your team from the lower levels up, and make sure every person in your organization knows you try to win it all every year.