Brewing moneybrawl is casting a shadow over MLB
Tanking is in. Tanking is cool. Tanking is the new-world order in Major League Baseball. Losing a lot now to hopefully win big later is also preventing a ton of already rich ballplayers from becoming even wealthier in 2018.
“A record number of talented free agents remain unemployed in an industry where revenues and franchise values are at record highs,” MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark said Tuesday in a statement. “Spring training has always been associated with hope for a new season. This year, a significant number of teams are engaged in a race to the bottom. This conduct is a fundamental breach of the trust between a team and its fans, and threatens the very integrity of our game.”
Did the Astros have “integrity” in 2011-13, when they lost 324 games in three seasons and pretty much acknowledged each year that their fight at the major league level was finished by May?
Former commissioner Bud Selig said in 2013 that neither he nor MLB had a problem with the Astros’ low-payroll blues as Houston’s baseball team stunk it up on the big league diamond
and devoted its resources toward filling up the minor league and international talent pipelines.
“I do trust the (Astros) organization,” Selig said then. “Look, every organization goes through certain phases. They have chosen the path with some very qualified people. And the only way you can really build a solid organization, a solid team, is through a very productive farm system. And I think they’re doing it the right way. There’s no question in my mind.”
As 2018 spring training approaches — the grand ol’ game and your local world champions will be back before you know it, Houston — more teams than ever want to be last year’s Astros. Or the 2016 Cubs. Or the 1990s Braves (who are bad again). Or the 2003 Marlins (who are, of course, rebuilding again).
And you know what? I can’t blame them. The playing field isn’t level in MLB.
I wouldn’t overpay Yu Darvish, either. He’s 31, was the playoff best friend of the Astros, and is coming off a 10-12 season with a 3.86 ERA.
J.D. Martinez turned into one of MLB’s best stories once he left the Astros, clubbing 45 home runs last season, including 29 in just 62 games with Arizona. He’s also 30, is entering his eighth major league season and might not be worth all the crazy cash at the end of his career.
Astros in great shape
Thanks to how bad they were, the Astros currently don’t have to worry about wildly overpaying for aging All-Star talent that will soon be on the decline. MVP Jose Altuve is an old-school steal at $6 million in 2018. George Springer’s new two-year, $24 million deal is a modern bargain, and the MVP of the World Series won’t reach free agency until 2021. And by drawing from a prospect pool they partially built up by losing big, the Astros still have a solid farm system intact, even after trading three young names for Justin Verlander last August and dealing four players for Gerrit Cole last month.
The rest of baseball is finally catching up to the 111-loss Astros from 2013 and the 101-loss Cubs from 2012. Which is partly why the league office and players union are fighting in public a week before pitchers and catchers start working out together.
“Owners own teams for one reason: They want to win. In baseball, it has always been true that clubs go through cyclical, multiyear strategies directed at winning,” MLB said Tuesday in a statement. “It is common at this point in the calendar to have large numbers of free agents unsigned. What is uncommon is to have some of the best free agents sitting unsigned, even though they have substantial offers, some in nine figures. … To lay responsibility on the clubs for the failure of some agents to accurately assess the market is unfair, unwarranted and inflammatory.”
This push-and-pull game has been building for months. MLB is also blatantly ignoring the fact that almost half of its teams don’t appear to be trying right now.
Imagine being a Marlins or Pirates fan in 2018. It’d be like owning season tickets to the 2013 Astros.
Collusion is almost always impossible to prove. Tanking and taking the cookie-cutter, follow-the-leader approach — “The Astros and Cubs pulled it off. So can we!” — makes more practical sense.
The rise of sabermetrics and modern player evaluation (emphasis on “value”) have played a part. Why give Free Agent A $80 million for five years when you can pay the minimum for comparable production from Players B, C and D and have the latter under team control for years?
The Astros accepted this in 2012 and ’13 as their rebuild bottomed out. They refused to pay market value for big names who would add only a few wins to already-dead seasons.
It also doesn’t help that some of the sport’s biggest agents have been spewing biased gibberish for years, all while piling up the game’s best talent and lining their pockets when their stars get paid.
“The Astros, they’re like Disneyland,” agent Scott Boras said in November 2013. “If the kids come, it’s a great attraction.”
Cubs made it work
He also knocked the Cubs that year. Three seasons later, Chicago won 103 games and a world title, ending a 108-year drought.
“The integrity of the game has been compromised,’’ Boras told USA Today in 2013. “What baseball has done, it has created a dynamic where draft dollars are affecting the major leaguers. Teams are constructing clubs to be non-competitive, like Houston and Miami, so they can position themselves where they can get more draft dollars. Clubs are trying to finish last to create more draft dollars. And this dramatically affects the wild-card and major league standings.’’
Less than five years later, agent Brodie Van Wagenen — who is tied to several current free agents and represents Todd Frazier, who signed a two-year, $17 million deal with the New York Mets on Monday — issued a statement that could have been mistaken by some as a declaration of war.
“There is a rising tide among players for radical change,” Van Wagenen said. “A fight is brewing. And it may begin with one, maybe two, and perhaps 1,200 willing to follow. A boycott of spring training may be a starting point, if behavior doesn’t change.”
MLB has ignored its tanking problem for years. Now, intentionally losing — which pays off only if you win it all — is in vogue, and millionaires aren’t being paid.
We’re a long way from the embarrassment of 1994 and a real strike.
But baseball also has a long track record of screwing up the game, just when it’s getting good again.