“Tanking” is one of the buzzwords of the 2016 season as several also-rans are blowing up their big league teams in an attempt to rebuild and not bothering to hide their intentions. After one month of baseball, for example, it’s clear that if Bryan Price tried to hand Reds players shirts that said “Try not to suck,” Walt Jocketty would yell at him for doing it wrong.
The 2016 Cubs are evidence that such a plan can have big rewards. And as with everything else in baseball, the success of an organization like the Cubs leads many others to imitate them. (Incidentally, even after such a wonderful April, Clippy still highlighted that sentence and said “It looks like you need an intervention.”)
Unfortunately for some of these teams, they’re about to discover a hard truth in the current baseball climate. The Cubs’ rebuilding effort worked so well not just because Theo Epstein recognized that losses in the present produce the chance to build a great future but also because he was one of the first to do so.
Throughout his tenures with the Red Sox and Cubs, the one constant of Epstein’s team building philosophies was the desire to be ahead of the curve. From applying an OBP-centric philosophy to spending over slot on late round draft picks to losing on the big league level in order to earn more draft pool money, Epstein has consistently been an innovator instead of a follower when it comes to roster construction. And that just as much as any specific method is why the Cubs find themselves where they are today.
From 2012 to 2014, the Cubs’ only real competition in sacrificing present day wins to build their team in a similar manner to Epstein’s plan was the Houston Astros. And because there were only two teams that were fully committed to actively pursuing high draft picks, that meant the Cubs were guaranteed a spot near the top of the list. Which proved to be pretty important when the number two pick that they earned with 101 losses netted them Kris Bryant.
Such high draft choices were crucial to Epstein’s plan. And even when a team like the Marlins landed ahead of the Cubs in the 2014 draft through their own incompetence, Epstein was able to utilize another one of his organization’s greatest assets: not being owned by Jeffrey Loria. And that’s how the Cubs landed Kyle Schwarber.
Locking up high draft picks was crucial to helping the Cubs’ plan. Now consider what’s happening in baseball this season. The Braves have assembled an offense as if to say “The Tomahawk Chop is really racist so let’s prevent them from playing it all year.” (This is the only context in which signing AJ Pierzynski is a victory for human rights.) The Reds and Brewers have recognized what’s going on at the top of the division and have also cashed in their chips on 2016.
That just scratches the surface. The Padres and Twins are horrendous. And while the Phillies and Rockies are off to decent starts, there’s probably a decent chance that one or both of them will fall off this pace, as the lack of Black Eyed Peas on the radio indicates that this isn’t 2009.
So that means that one of the teams that is currently tanking is going to lose well over 90 games in 2016 for the reward of… the number six pick. And if the Yankees or Astros continue to play this poorly, it’s conceivable that it could turn into the eighth or ninth pick instead.
Now, it’s still conceivably possible to pick a great player at that point in the draft. But with the way MLB has structured its draft rules, a Kris Bryant-type is not going to fall that far.
If the Cubs tried to begin their tanking plan right now, there’s a good chance they’d lose 90 games and still end up drafting uninspiring players in the middle of the pack. And the most humiliating part for Theo would be getting sued for plagiarism by Andy MacPhail.
But it would actually be even worse than that. MLB’s current rules assign bonus pool caps for each team’s first 10 rounds of the draft based on predetermined slot values for every pick. And that cap becomes more oppressive the further a team falls in the draft.
Using last year’s first round slot values as a guide, MLB’s recommended bonus for the second overall pick was $7.4 million. For the number six pick? $3.9 million.
So even assuming a fantasy world where Bryant would fall to number six, the Cubs would still have to run that bonus number by his agent. And this negotiation would be the quickest in baseball history.
EPSTEIN: Hey Scott, here’s the best offer MLB will let me make.
BORAS: Hey Theo, you know what this contract has in common with Kris Bryant’s eyes?
EPSTEIN: What?
BORAS: It’s adorable.
A tighter spending cap would also have meant that the money wouldn’t be there for Epstein to sign high ceiling draftees like Carson Sands and Dylan Cease in the later rounds as well. So not only do some of this year’s tanking teams run the risk of missing out on potential superstar talent, MLB’s rules make it substantially more difficult for them to use the draft to build system depth.
In a good argument for the existence of karma, because so many teams are tanking the 2016 season, this substantially lessens the value of doing so. And because of that, some of these same teams are running the risk of being bad for a much longer period of time than they had anticipated.
Thanks to Epstein’s foresight, the Cubs lost for just the right amount of time: right after MLB’s draft rules changed but before too many teams decided to join the fight for the same draft slot.
One of Epstein’s most underrated strengths is that if everyone else in baseball is doing something, he’s already looking for a hidden advantage elsewhere in the system that he can exploit. For instance, now that so many teams in baseball are deliberately tanking the 2016 season, Epstein has switched the Cubs’ philosophy to “Let’s get really, really good and then play them a lot.”
I guess this is why Yale costs $45,000 a year.
Lead photo courtesy Charles LeClaire—USA Today Sports.
I’m going to disagree with the notion that 2012-2014 were sacrificed with the intention of gaining high draft picks, if that is the point you are making. Even though tanking has been a very hot topic recently, I still don’t think it makes sense as a strategy. Dave Cameron at Fangraphs has said as much as well: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/tanking-does-mlb-really-have-a-problem/
When Theo came to the Cubs, he had to remake the organization. The team was nowhere near a contender, and he recognized that. The high draft picks were not the reason he blew the team up, I think they were a byproduct of it. And the evidence is the roster. The 2016 Cubs are clearly the best team in baseball, but how much of that was due to the high draft picks they netted by ‘tanking’? Kris Bryant, that’s it. Rizzo, Arrietta, Heyward, Fowler, Lester, Lackey, Zobrist, Soler, Hammel, Kendrick, Russell – none of these guys were obtained because the Cubs decided to tank. They were obtained because Theo saw the team they had 2012-2014 just wasn’t that good, so the best way to maximize the value they did have at the time was to act as sellers to teams who were contenders.
You kind of negated your own point by giving examples of other teams that did so but still weren’t able to build contenders. Hell, Schwarbers injury almost illustrates the point as well. Schwarber was certainly a great hitter last year, and hopefully he will come back from his injury and have a great career. But 1 injury to that player you drafted and all of a sudden the year you tanked wasn’t worth it. Combined with the uncertainty regarding amateur players and I just don’t think losing intentionally with the hopes of gaining a high draft pick makes sense. And I’m not sure Theo does either.
I agree up to a point, but it’s not just that high first round pick. It’s also the slot money that goes with it and how you use it. The Cubs made the best use of the possibilities tanking made available based on the CBA rules then in place.
Also, the Cubs were actually a little late to the party, so to speak, since the new CBA changed the playing field and took away some of the loopholes the Cardinals and other teams were able to exploit during their rebuilds, and it speaks volumes to Theo and the brain trust he put together that he was still able to pull it off. And, of course, there was a lot of luck involved too.
Spectacular article.
Great article — especially the MacPhail line. #nailedit
If the draft rules stay roughly similar, I wonder if Theo’s next gambit might be to blow past the 2017 amateur draft pool dollars and draft every player money can buy. The Cubs won’t have any significant dollars to spend in the Carribean and will be able to pay any overage penalty with beer money. They can do more than enough to compensate for the future lost picks. They could restock their entire system and build years of depth with a killer draft.