Tanking and Parity

Dave Cameron explores the connection between providing incentives to lose and increased parity in baseball.

Stockpiling draft picks is no guarantee of success, of course, but MLB saw the draft as one of the primary ways to give losing teams a chance to get back to the winning side of things, and instituted the bonus-pool system to remedy the fact that winning teams were getting too many elite talents in the draft by selecting “hard-sign” players who fell to the later picks because of their bonus demands. And because the international system was essentially the wild west, teams with money to spend found ways to win and load up on young talent simultaneously. The current pool-allocation systems were instituted in order to try and limit the ability of the highest-revenue teams to build impregnable juggernauts, and strengthen the draft’s ability to funnel top talent to losing teams.

The primary argument for rewarding losing — which isn’t a new concept — is to improve competitive balance. And perhaps not coincidentally, MLB is experiencing unprecedented levels of parity at this moment.

As readers of the old Bill James Baseball Abstract know, parity has been steadily increasing over the entire history of baseball. That’s why I don’t agree with this:

The argument for reducing the rewards of losing is also an argument for reducing competitive balance in Major League Baseball. If you make it harder for losing teams to get better players, then losing teams are going to stay losing teams for longer. We can’t celebrate parity and decry the incentives to lose at the same time, because the rewards for losing are part of the system that create parity in the first place.

Note that before the pool allocation systems, no one was ever accused of tanking. Teams argued they could not afford the high price of draft picks and let better ones slip. They still could draft pretty good players, not just the best. Now the worse teams can afford the best draft picks, so tanking is a much better option.

There is a also another good reason to tank. The pooled money from national broadcasts and MLBAM means teams are bringing in between $75 and $100 million a year before they get to local sources of revenue. So you can put together a crappy team for $50 million, and still make a lot of money. You can save that, since you don’t need to spend much on a good draft pick, develop your team, and then spend on the pieces you need to win when ready.

I’ll argue once again that the draft is no longer needed. National money means all teams can compete for good players. Make everyone a free agent, and you remove all incentives to lose.

The more complicated the rules get, the more teams will game the system. If teams won’t elimiate the draft and the reserve clause, at least go back to allowing drafted players to negotiate the best deal. Parity was still increasing then, and no one was accused of tanking.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/1QpPvO9