Major League Baseball Still Has A Tanking Problem

Major League Baseball has a tanking problem, and in the week after the 99-day lockout ended, it doesn’t appear that it is going away.

Organizations not fielding competitive teams was one of the issues that both players and owners hoped to address in the new collective bargaining agreement. A higher competitive balance tax threshold and a wider field for the playoffs should have done at least a little to improve things.

But teams like the Cincinnati Reds are showing that there are some organizations still happy to trade away their best talent and field a last-place team.

This is a surprise, given where it looked like things stood for the Reds as recently as 2019.

Just this week, however, the Reds traded both Jesse Winker and Eugenio Suarez to the Seattle Mariners and Sonny Gray to the Twins. Earlier in the offseason, they lost Wade Miley on waivers to the Cubs, and they traded Tucker Barnhart to the Detroit Tigers. And don’t forget, the Reds appear content to let free agent outfielder Nick Castellanos play elsewhere.

There is no reason to believe they are done, either. The Reds have Mike Moustakas under contract for two more years and a club option for 2024, but he would be a valuable trade piece. Luis Castillo had a down year last season, but 2023 will be his final year in arbitration.

As things stand now, the Reds’ estimated 2022 payroll is $90 million. No where close to the new competitive balance tax threshold. If they do trade Moustakas and/or Castillo, that payroll will flirt with $66 million. For comparison, Max Scherzer will get $43.3 million from the Mets this season.

The sad thing is, the Reds have plenty of incentive to have tried to put together a competitive squad in 2022.

Cincinnati finished with 83 wins in 2021, good for third place in the National League Central. That win total would also have put them in the field for the postseason under the new 12-team format.

Their division is not a particularly strong one, either. The St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers are the most talented on paper, but neither team is scary. Otherwise, there is not much competition. The Pittsburgh Pirates are different from the Reds only in that they are further along in their process of gutting the major league roster. The Chicago Cubs are a question mark, but even after signing Marcus Stroman in December, they have a ways to go before they are to be treated as serious competitors again.

The Reds are not alone, either. This week the Oakland Athletics traded Chris Bassitt and Matt Olson to the Mets and Braves, respectively. And reports early Tuesday indicated that the A’s might not be done dealing.

The Reds and A’s are just two examples. Across the league, there are teams showing a clear lack of intention to vie for one of the twelve playoff spots in the fall. Derek Jeter left the Miami Marlins largely because of their unwillingness to commit to being competitive. Early Tuesday it was reported that they were in talks with former Reds outfielder Castellanos — who apparently wanted to sign with Miami — but the Marlins have decided instead to let that opportunity pass them by.

Those teams might paper over what they are doing by calling it a rebuild or something close to it, but firm examples of rebuilds that have worked are few. The Cubs and Houston Astros seemed to have demonstrated that a combination of investing in the farm system while neglecting the major league team for a short period and then signing top-tier free agents as their young players graduate into the majors can work. But for those two examples, there are plenty more of teams that have simply been mediocre — and in some cases, plain bad — for years. And with no sign of a change in the future.

The 162-game season might be the great leveler, but it should not be so easy in the middle of March to predict what most of the playoff field will be in October.

For all of the positive changes the new collective bargaining agreement brought, teams are still clearly tanking. It took only days after the CBA was signed for the likes of the Reds and A’s to start trading away some of their best talent.

Small and mid-size markets can’t be blamed here. The Cubs are in one of the largest markets in the country and still tanked their way to a 2016 championship and appear to be trying to tank their way to another one.

In order to fix the problem at hand, more extreme changes might be necessary. The competitive balance tax more or less functions as a salary cap, but it might also have come to the point that baseball needs a salary floor as well. The short-term response by some teams to the expanded playoff seems to indicate that it is not enough to incentivize everyone to assemble a competitive team. Tanking, it seems, is not going away.