LOCKOUT '22: When will we see baseball again?

[buddha]

20 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

That is not a bad idea.  Not as cool as relegation, but better than having teams deliberastely sucking for five years with the hopes of getting good again some time.  

america's socialized sports will never agree to actual pain for ownership.

and all this talk of punishing owners for their teams losing is funny.  why dont you all just root for a different team if you dont like what yours is doing?  lol.

[buddha]

3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

right. 1st, you probably have some teams whose management does want to win but are just incompetent. The Tigers under Randy Smith probably fit that bill. Then you have the teams you cite for whom profits are more important than wins, and there is no question that doing the most you can to win is probably not the most profitable strategy, or worse, you have a team in the situation where losing a lot is actually the most predictable and financially lowest risk strategy. Clearly those teams should be moved or their ownership replaced, but there is no easy mechanism to get to those decisions.

all teams want to win.  luck and bad leadership often prevent that.  oftentimes teams realize they do not have the resources to win in an individual season so they make long term plans to establish a base to win in the future.

sometimes those plans dont succeed because they are competing against other teams who also want to win.

welcome to sports, fellas.  not sure when we had this magical time when all teams were competing at the same level every season.

[gehringer_2]

8 minutes ago, buddha said:

all teams want to win.

but not to anywhere near the same degree.

Quote

so they make long term plans to establish a base to win in the future.

Example - Mike Ilitch was much more desperate to win when he started writing blank checks than the Cards were when they let Pujols walk.

Edited February 5, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Dan Gilmore]

I think that using terms like punishing, rewards failure, or even just failure, fairness, not trying - they all seem misapplied to baseball organizations that are big businesses. Just happen to be big businesses in a sport we all love and follow. Of course there is the anti-trust issue…

Until the two sides agree to play again I guess we can debate this sort of thing, but it seems rather disconnected from how things go IRL.

[buddha]

16 minutes ago, Dan Gilmore said:

I think that using terms like punishing, rewards failure, or even just failure, fairness, not trying - they all seem misapplied to baseball organizations that are big businesses. Just happen to be big businesses in a sport we all love and follow. Of course there is the anti-trust issue…

Until the two sides agree to play again I guess we can debate this sort of thing, but it seems rather disconnected from how things go IRL.

its extremely disconnected from real life.  a bunch of smart people who took econ in college ranting about incentives and rewards.

[Longgone]

43 minutes ago, chasfh said:

For many organizations, success is measured by profits on the business which is why so many orgs field shit teams year after year. It may be marginally more profitable to win than to lose, but the difference doesn’t appear to be enough to dissuade the perpetual tankers from perpetually tanking. 

I believe that is a baseless assumption.

[Tiger337]

43 minutes ago, buddha said:

all teams want to win.  luck and bad leadership often prevent that.  oftentimes teams realize they do not have the resources to win in an individual season so they make long term plans to establish a base to win in the future.

sometimes those plans dont succeed because they are competing against other teams who also want to win.

welcome to sports, fellas.  not sure when we had this magical time when all teams were competing at the same level every season.

It used to be worse.  However, this idea of that being terrible for five years as a prerequisite to success is relatively new.  

 

[gehringer_2]

56 minutes ago, buddha said:

welcome to sports, fellas.  not sure when we had this magical time when all teams were competing at the same level every season.

If you are from Detroit you have the example that despite the efforts of the league that has done more than any other in history to insure parity - the NFL, a team can still be consistently bad for a long time. There is no cure for incompetent ownership. 

In the end, it's not of much value to say an owner 'wants to win' if he/she is clueless about how to.

Edited February 5, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Longgone]

6 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

It used to be worse.  However, this idea of that being terrible for five years as a prerequisite to success is relatively new.  

 

Its not acceptable, but shit happens. If you think some contrived carrot/stick is going to make any difference, then i don't know what else can be said.

[Tiger337]

Just now, Longgone said:

Its not acceptable, but shit happens. If you think some contrived carrot/stick is going to make any difference, then i don't know what else can be said.

I don't know if it would make a difference, but I would like to see a lottery based on principle.  Teams should not be rewarded for being terrible.  An 8-team lottery would help teams in need get better without rewarding incompetence.  

[buddha]

9 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

It used to be worse.  However, this idea of that being terrible for five years as a prerequisite to success is relatively new.  

 

i would agree that it used to be worse and i would argue that the measures the leagues have put into place that everyone is mad about have actually done a lot to make sure it gets better!

should we go back to the glory days of the yankees winning every year?  no salary caps.  no draft.  but nobody was intentionally tanking for draft position so it was all good.

[1984Echoes]

3 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

... An 8-team lottery would help teams in need get better without rewarding incompetence.  

Horseshit. If the Red Wings or Tigers have the worse record in the league but are now picking 8th because of a lottery that helps them get better?

I'm calling BS. I do NOT think losing in a lottery helps a bad team get better. Just the opposite, in fact.

Did I mention the fact that... I F'ing HATE lotteries...?

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Horseshit. If the Red Wings or Tigers have the worse record in the league but are now picking 8th because of a lottery that helps them get better?

I'm calling BS. I do NOT think losing in a lottery helps a bad team get better. Just the opposite, in fact.

Did I mention the fact that... I F'ing HATE lotteries...?

Yes, getting one of the top 8 picks for five years in a row should make a team get better.  

You are assuming that the Tigers will get unlucky in the lottery.   Did you ever think that they might finish with the eighth worst record and then WIN the lottery?  Detroit sports fans are great (at least the Tigers fans are!), but they are very pessimistic.  

[gehringer_2]

8 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Horseshit. If the Red Wings or Tigers have the worse record in the league but are now picking 8th because of a lottery that helps them get better?

I'm calling BS. I do NOT think losing in a lottery helps a bad team get better. Just the opposite, in fact.

Did I mention the fact that... I F'ing HATE lotteries...?

The Red Wings are really the very best counter-argument. No-one, and I mean absolutely no-one believes the Red Wings org has even tried to tank. If anything they tried way too hard to hang on the dying embers of their previous run for too long. The Wings never suffered any lack of intention, they simple suffered too much of a guy that once knew how to win but apparently forgot in the form of one Kenny Holland. So now ownership has corrected that mistake and the result is that the lottery has totally hammered a team that wants nothing more than to get better.

Edited February 5, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Longgone]

7 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Horseshit. If the Red Wings or Tigers have the worse record in the league but are now picking 8th because of a lottery that helps them get better?

I'm calling BS. I do NOT think losing in a lottery helps a bad team get better. Just the opposite, in fact.

Did I mention the fact that... I F'ing HATE lotteries...?

They are dumb, they are an irrational response to a mythical problem. Baseball has enough real issues without wasting time on this crap.

[oblong]

23 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

It used to be worse.  However, this idea of that being terrible for five years as a prerequisite to success is relatively new.  

 

The idea isn’t to necessarily be terrible. Just cheap. Then just use the excuse of trying to “build”. 
 

At the end of the day baseball is a monopoly. Winning games and making the playoffs is an artificial metric in terms of running a business.  Success is whatever the individual owner decides it is.  Yes they want to win and that may be their primary goal but they have parameters they will work in to achieve that. Their competition isn’t each other. They are all partners. Their competition is other forms of entertainment from April to October. 

[Tiger337]

If everybody wants to win, why do we have threads where everyone roots for the Tigers to finish last?  If the fans want to finish last, perhaps the front office secretly wants the same.  

[Tiger337]

Another thing I wouldn't mind seeing is for the draft to be based on team records through the trade deadline.  That would help rid the perception that teams are tanking late in the season.    

[gehringer_2]

7 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

If everybody wants to win, why do we have threads where everyone roots for the Tigers to finish last?  If the fans want to finish last, perhaps the front office secretly wants the same.  

Well, apparently Steven Ross wanted to tank. The problem is not that no team has ever wanted to tank, it's how do you punish them without punishing the teams that are bad but honestly want to get better? It's the 'better a guilty man go free than an innocent man be wrongly convicted" argument.

Edited February 5, 2022 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Another thing I wouldn't mind seeing is for the draft to be based on team records through the trade deadline.  That would help rid the perception that teams are tanking late in the season.    

I like that.

[Tiger337]

Finally an idea that someone likes!  😃

[gehringer_2]

24 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

but they are very pessimistic.  

born of cruel experience!

Edited February 5, 2022 by gehringer_2

[IdahoBert]

As for a lottery I can see this as a rational solution to a concrete problem but many decisions everywhere all the time are made due to factors other than reason alone such as power relations etc. I’m not holding my breath for anything to happen because reasoning parties have found Jesus and arrived at some notion of the common good. But it could happen. 

[IdahoBert]

I keep checking this site to see if “we’ve got there yet.“ Whenever there is news it’s like being on a road trip in the backseat and dad pulls into McDonald’s and everyone gets excited and he buys a coffee for himself then drives away. There’s no good news. 

[Longgone]

36 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

If everybody wants to win, why do we have threads where everyone roots for the Tigers to finish last?  If the fans want to finish last, perhaps the front office secretly wants the same.  

They want draft picks because they want to win!!!!