The Law of Tanking, Part Two
After part one of this series, many of you began debating whether, under Major League Rule 21(a), tanking — that is, deliberately conceding a season for the purposes of experiencing success in later seasons — was barred by the same Rule which bars deliberately losing a game. I’d like to address that matter here.
To refresh our memories, Rule 21(a) says this:
(a) MISCONDUCT IN PLAYING BASEBALL. Any player or person connected with a Club who shall promise or agree to lose, or to attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game with which he is or may be in any way concerned, or who shall intentionally lose or attempt to lose, or intentionally fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any such baseball game, or who shall solicit or attempt to induce any player or person connected with a Club to lose or attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game with which such other player or person is or may be in any way concerned, or who, being solicited by any person, shall fail to inform the Commissioner (in the case of a player or person associated with a Major League Club) or the President of the Minor League Association (in the case of a player or person associated with an independent Minor League Club) immediately of such solicitation, and of all facts and circumstances connected therewith, shall be declared permanently ineligible.
To understand this in context, imagine (if you will) a scenario in which the 2018 Baltimore Orioles made a deal with the Devil at the All-Star break. As part of that deal, the Orioles agreed to voluntarily lose 90% of their games in the second half of the season. In exchange, Mephistopheles would agree to give the Orioles 95 wins and a playoff berth in 2021.
On the one hand, that would appear to violate the Rules, right? Indeed, we established last time that a team (including its front office, not just the players) can’t try to lose on purpose. On the other hand, this deal with the Devil isn’t all that different, practically speaking, from the efforts by a club to sell off assets at the trade deadline, is it? By trading Manny Machado, the Orioles made themselves deliberately worse — and less likely to win games in the second half — in hopes of winning in the future. But then, that can’t be right, because front offices don’t get barred from strip-mining their rosters in search of prospect gold.
The answer might be in how tanking differs from intentionally throwing a game. As attorney Mike Gilleran wrote for Santa Clara University School of Law,
[t]he process of “tanking” by a professional team in order to enhance its draft position presents an interesting ethical question. First, by tanking, I mean the situation where a professional team intentionally does not use its best available players in a contest. I am not saying that the players who actually participate in the game(s) give less than their best effort. I am saying that management and coaches make a decision that they will use relatively inferior players in a game, even though better players are healthy and available, and even though that course of action is more likely to result in a loss.
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Characterized this way, a fire sale — where a front office forces its team to use inferior players in a game — becomes distinct from a scenario in which those same players refuse to put forth their best efforts. And Rule 21(a) does focus on “best efforts” repeatedly, making Gilleran’s explanation a plausible reading of the Rule. In his interpretation, Gilleran emphasizes that, while the front office’s actions make it more likely the team will lose, losing isn’t the primary goal of tanking. And that makes a certain amount of intuitive sense.
But at the same time, this answer is still unsatisfactory in certain circumstances, for two reasons. First, it doesn’t address the language in the Rule which utilizes the phrase “attempt to lose.” And second, what about preseason fire sales? You can argue persuasively that a midseason fire sale is acceptable because it allows for a scenario in which a club tried to win, failed, and then sold assets for players who would give their best efforts in future years. But if an organization strip-mines its roster before the season, is it tantamount to never trying to win at all?
I’m talking, in this case, about the erstwhile Florida Marlins. Miami’s new chief executive officer, Derek Jeter, said before the 2018 season that his administration planned to cut payroll because they couldn’t afford to pay it. That’s part of what led the MLBPA to file a grievance against the Marlins and three other teams earlier this year. As I noted then,
Derek Jeter responded to the grievance by pointing out that the Marlins have gone eight years without a winning record and haven’t made the playoffs since 2003. I’m not sure that argument helps here, though, given that last year’s Marlins won 77 games and had arguably the majors’ best outfield. Instead of building, the Fish have reportedly been trying to get their payroll to as low as $55 million and have pursued that goal with great vigor, trading Dee Gordon, Marcell Ozuna, Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, and others in what is — by one measure, at least — the biggest fire sale ever. The most fascinating aspect of this is that Rob Manfred and MLB may have been aware of the Marlins’ plan before approving the sale of the franchise.
MLBPA’s grievance was based on the Marlins’ allegedly improper use of revenue sharing money for purposes other than on-field improvements. But the MLBPA might have had an argument under Rule 21(a), as well. After all, the Marlins did make a concerted effort to worsen the team, and they evidently were open about doing so for financial purposes. And while some of this is armchair quarterbacking, the moves yielded underwhelming returns consistent with a team looking to slash payroll as quickly as possible rather than obtaining players for future wins. Lewis Brinson and Magneuris Sierra, the main pieces in their Ozuna and Yelich deals, haven’t hit at all. The centerpiece in the Stanton deal was Starlin Castro.
So, let’s assume that Jeter’s Marlins really did sell off assets primarily for financial reasons. Based on that, it’s entirely plausible to say that the Marlins’ front office violated Rule 21(a). Why? They intentionally failed to give their best efforts towards winning and arguably attempted to lose for financial purposes.
To look at it a different way, let’s start with the difference in payroll between 2017 and 2018. In 2017, the Marlins had a team payroll of $110,765,599. In 2018, it was $91,817,860. That’s a difference of $18,947,739. Now, assume that the Marlins sold off no players at all and, instead, received a check for $18,947,739 to not play Gordon, Ozuna, Stanton, and Yelich at all in 2018. That’s pretty clearly a violation of Rule 21(a), isn’t it? But the only difference between these two scenarios is that, in one, the Marlins are being paid to use replacement-level players instead of stars and, in the other, the Marlins are intentionally trading stars for subpar returns so as to realize a financial gain. In other words, the primary difference is whether or not the Fish receive the money in terms of savings or via a third-party payment, and third-party payments aren’t required for a violation of Rule 21(a).
But if the Marlins’ tanking isn’t permissible and the Orioles’ tanking is, where’s the line between them? Technically, after all, you could make a convincing case that both violate Rule 21(a), but nobody is ever punished for a deadline sell-off. Perhaps the difference can be found in the team’s motivation. Rule 21(a) uses a lot of words referring to what we might call mens rea or scienter — intent or knowledge of wrongdoing. If a team’s front office acts with the intent of winning more games in the future than they are losing now, that’s probably not a violation of Rule 21(a). The 2013 Astros, for example, acted with the intention of putting the best possible future team together. On the other hand, if a team acts for financial or other off-field considerations, that probably is a violation, because they are intentionally making the team worse without a legitimate baseball-related reason for doing so.
But while that may satisfy Rule 21(a), that’s not the only Rule which governs tanking. We’ll discuss the “integrity of the game” next time.
Sheryl Ring is a litigation attorney and General Counsel at Open Communities, a non-profit legal aid agency in the Chicago suburbs. You can reach her on twitter at @Ring_Sheryl. The opinions expressed here are solely the author's. This post is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.
Seems to me that there’s been a serious lack of context in these posts. A quick google search shows that this rule was implemented (not surprisingly) after the Black Sox scandal. Those are the sorts of incidents that this rule was intended to prevent. It takes a LOT of imagination to try to apply this rule to something like tanking..
As I think about this a bit more, here are some serious issues with this piece:
1) Teams have been engaging in some form of tanking behavior for over 100 years. And MLB has done nothing in response. So clearly they don’t see tanking as a violation of this rule. And if they did all of a sudden start using this rule and banning executives from baseball for life, they’d be overturning a century of precedence. I think we can all agree that MLB isn’t going to do that.
2) In the recent Donaldson situation, teams complained to MLB about the trade. Could something like that happen here? Highly unlikely. For one thing, every team participates in and benefits from the “tanking system” to some degree or another. Secondly, getting an executive banned for life puts every other teams’ executives at risk, particularly since there no definition of what tanking is. So this isn’t happening either.
3) Could a fan of a tanking team file a grievance? I’m no legal expert but I’m pretty sure that fans have zero legal standing when it comes to the enforcement of baseball’s internal rules.
So even if it could be argued that this rule applies to tanking, there’s simply no way to get from here to there.
About the only plausible scenario that I could see would be something like say Derek Jeter receiving secret payments from the Yankees to keep them apprised of his trade talks. But I’m sure there are other rules that would cover that sort of action so you wouldn’t need to resort to this particular rule.
Good points. To your last hypothetical about “something like say Derek Jeter receiving secret payments from the Yankees to keep them apprised of his trade talks”, I agree with you that there are multiple avenues of not only other MLB rules but also general law (and likely terms of an employment contract) that would apply to this situation. The Marlins would obviously fire Jeter in this hypothetical situation, but I think that would be the least of his problems.
IANAL, but I think that what you describe would violate criminal statutes regarding bribes and kickbacks. In other words, it could very well end up as something like the Chris Correa situation, where the executive lost his job, was convicted of a crime, and was also banned from baseball for life.
If an executive is high enough up to be an officer of a corporate entity (Jeter almost certainly is), there’s also the concept in corporate law of a “duty of loyalty” to a corporation, which this example clearly violates. That ought to be a civil matter, not criminal, but should be another basis for the Marlins to sue Jeter for restitution.
I assume in such a situation the Yankees’ executives would also be in legal trouble for knowingly providing payment to an executive of another team?
Yes. Again IANAL, but pretty sure that they would also face the possibility of criminal trouble (plus whatever baseball does and presumably some chance of a civil lawsuit). It is generally a crime to pay a bribe or receive a bribe.
A bit of Googling tells me that apparently not every state has laws against commercial bribery (as opposed to bribing public officials), but about 35 do, including both New York and Florida. There’s no specific federal criminal statute addressing commercial bribery, but apparently it can be prosecuted at the federal level as wire fraud and/or mail fraud depending on the circumstances.
I think that almost all U.S. Attorneys and state D.A.’s would salivate at the publicity of a wire fraud or commercial bribery prosecution of a disgraced sports executive in your hypothetical situation.
My reply said it was awaiting moderation for no reason that I can discern.
Short answer, again subject to my caveat that IANAL: yes, paying the bribe would be a crime as well as receiving it. Apparently, based on Googling the topic, federal wire fraud and/or mail fraud statutes would pick up this activity. The laws that specifically address commercial bribery are state laws in most, but not all, states.
Originalism sucks.
Charlie Finley acted rationally (for once) when he sold off Rudi, Fingers, and Blue in ’76 –but the Commissioner voided the deals and banned straight-up sales.
Who’s to say that the Marlins’ tanking is not permissible? Not the MLBPA which, as you stated, was complaining about player salaries. I certainly don’t see any sort of disciplinary consequence having come their way.
That’s an exceptionally obtuse reading of Gilleran’s commentary. If the team has dealt its best players, they aren’t healthy and available for any post-deal game they aren’t playing in. His definition of tanking refers to something like never starting a healthy Realmuto, not to trading him at some point.
Well said.
Any commentary about “[t]he process of ‘tanking’ by a professional team in order to enhance its draft position” is also dubious to bring into a discussion about baseball. Other writers on this site – I think Dave Cameron and probably others – have argued persuasively that getting one of the top two or three overall draft picks is more of a secondary benefit of an extreme rebuild or “tank” in baseball than the underlying goal of the exercise. The confidence level that the #1 overall pick in a given draft will in fact be better than the #5 (or #10 or #15) overall pick – or even an All-Star caliber major league player – is simply too small. On a related point, the timeframe for draft picks to reach the majors is too long.
The real drivers in a baseball rebuild are that a team is going to (1) trade away currently useful players who will be old and/or no longer under team control by the time a team expects to be competitive again and (2) avoid pursuing lengthy contracts with high-priced free agents, because the expected better performance in the early years of the contract won’t get a team to the playoffs and the later years could be an albatross when the team is actually good.
In the NBA, there’s a pretty good case that teams have done things like dramatically cut playing time of their better players with an apparent goal of losing to improve draft lottery position.
In the NFL, despite the apparent advantage from a guarantee of moving up in the draft and despite the “suck for Luck” chatter among some fanbases (mentioned by Gilleran), there’s little if any evidence of teams purposely trying to lose games to improve their draft position. I’m not certain why that is, though I suspect it could be related to the large size of the coaching staffs and player rosters (who all want to impress for potential future jobs) and the culture of a sport that plays highly physical games once per week.
I’m not familiar enough with the NHL to know if there are concerns that teams have engaged in NBA-style “tanking”. It seems that even Sheryl agrees that baseball teams haven’t done so in the sense of benching better players (who are still on the roster) with the expectation that will result in more losses.
Yes. This does seem to happen in the NBA. Teams literally avoid playing their good players in order to lose more games (you can’t realistically expect the players you do put out there to lose on purpose). This article and the one before it fundamentally misstate the spirit of the rule.
Also, the Marlins were not losing for financial gain. They were chasing financial gain with losing being the result. That was the order of things. There is no indication that the Marlins would prefer to lose than to win. It’s just that winning or losing were not the number one priority; cutting payroll was.
Sheryl,
Yours are some of my favorite articles. They discuss less-covered topics in a thoughtful way with an interesting viewpoint.
On this issue, regarding management actions, the business judgment rule needs to be considered as guidance. This rule basically means that management must have a reasonable basis for its actions. Otherwise, every decision can be subject to liability arising out of second-guessing. If every decision could be subject to legal review for being the best possible decision, instead of a reasonable decision, it is hard to draw the line. For example, what if a general manager, who for the sake of this example we can call TR, is stubborn and refuses to adopt player analysis strategies that are accepted by all of the other clubs? Would such a willful choice to ignore current strategies be a failure to use best efforts? What if TR remains loyal to his staff, even if almost all outside observers recognize and TR the probably also recognizes that the staff is less capable than that of all other teams? What about a team that is going on a road trip to New York and Baltimore and shuffles its pitching staff by calling up a AAA pitcher to start against the Yankees and skipping the ace’s turn until they play the Orioles, knowing that it means they are more likely to lose to the Yankees? Or another common tactic, to play back-ups on afternoon getaway days, which benches the starters and means that the team doesn’t have its best players trying to win the game? These are all considered reasonable management decisions, even if they mean that best efforts knowingly are not being made to win a game.
The legal definition of “best efforts” is a lot more squishy than people think. It is not a lever to re-examine whether someone did his or her absolute best at any given moment. Separating it from management’s right to make what it considers to be reasonable decisions for the benefit of the club is unlikely to be a successful legal strategy.
Oh I very much agree, which is why I don’t think teams selling off veterans for prospects violates the intent or spirit of the rule. However, Rule 21(a) is a good deal broader than I think is ideal, and that fact is evident here. That’s why I think the intent of the team in question makes a good deal of sense as a test, and is, in essence, the business judgment rule, baseball edition.
But at the same time, I think the Marlins are an outlier because I don’t buy the business judgment rule defense there. If you are selling off assets solely for pecuniary gain and without the aim of future improvements, there’s very little meaningful difference between that and accepting a check to field an inferior team. And so whilst tanking a la the Astros isn’t prohibited, I think the Marlins *are.*
That is a thoughtful viewpoint. Thanks for your response.
Sheryl, I respectfully but completely disagree with your argument.
Every MLB team has a payroll budget. It is more of a constraint on some teams than others due a combination of differing revenue levels, differing propensity of ownership to spend, and differing spots on the win curve (tied, at least loosely, to a team’s view of marginal revenue from a win). It is at some varying payroll level a binding constraint on every team, however: even the Yankees or Dodgers max out at a payroll budget that’s well below having a roster consisting of anything like the 25 highest paid players in baseball.
Informed by those constraints, it’s a fundamental point of baseball trade analysis – whether that’s by Fangraphs writers or an MLB front office – that “contracts (i.e., dollars) impact trade value”. (It’s also, BTW, true across the NFL, NBA, and NHL, which operate with either hard or soft salary caps that perhaps make the relationship clearer.)
Said a bit differently, one potential “future improvement” in trading away Stanton with his contract is avoiding the risk of paying Stanton approximately $30 million per year in his mid-30’s – his contract runs until he is 37 if he doesn’t opt out – when there’s a meaningful risk that he’s no more useful on the baseball field than 2017-18 Miguel Cabrera. Instead, a team can potentially spend those future payroll dollars on some other player(s).
Or, said more generally, completely trying to separate “legitimate baseball-related reason[s]” from “financial considerations” when talking about moves baseball teams make (or don’t make) is an utter impossibility, whether we’re discussing trades or free agent signings. Financial considerations are clearly and necessarily part of “legitimate baseball-related reason[s]”, per my point above that these teams are all businesses operating within a framework of revenue expectations and expense budgets. That’s clearly even more the case when a player’s remaining contract guarantee totals 10 years / $295 million, as was the case with Stanton when he was traded.
And, that basic point is sort of one of the fundamental premises of a significant portion of the analysis over the years at Fangraphs, almost on a par with “WAR is a better overall measure of position player value than Triple Crown stats”. While I’ll agree that it’s fair to examine our basic assumptions periodically to make sure that we don’t fall into lazy thinking, my view is that this fundamental point has been somewhat offhandedly tossed aside in this post. I’m trying to reference this history beyond a simple appeal to authority, but rather because I’m sure the rationale for why “contracts influence trade value” has been developed over the years on this site in far more detail than I’ve laid out here.
Here we go again.
“On the other hand, this deal with the Devil isn’t all that different, practically speaking, from the efforts by a club to sell off assets at the trade deadline, is it?”
Yes, for the love of god, yes it is. Dramatically, categorically different. The entire premise of this (series, apparently?) rests on the manifestly false opposition between “trying to win” and “trying to lose.” Even if you’re just using this analogy as a foil to your actual argument, the fact that you think it’s a useful frame in the first place–that a reasonable person might consider it even momentarily en route to a more measured conclusions–is the fundamental flaw of this whole misguided exercise.
“By trading Manny Machado, the Orioles made themselves deliberately worse…”
No, no they didn’t. They did the opposite. They took an asset of minimal value (1-2 wins in a hopelessly lost season), and they traded it for an asset of potential future value. In fact, their failure to do it even sooner was tantamount to malpractice in the eyes of most in the industry. If you think that consensus is wrong-headed, fair enough, write that article. But just look at how you have to twist things in order to shoe-horn this argument into an ill-fitting legal frame.
“They intentionally failed to give their best efforts towards winning and arguably attempted to lose for financial purposes.”
This is not “arguable.” The Marlins gain nothing financially from losing. They gain much from being willing to lose 100 games instead of 85, which is not the same thing. Are there interesting ethical implications for this? Or even legal/rule-based ones, given the complicating factor of revenue sharing funds? Absolutely. But you are not doing these questions any justice by pretending that MLB and the NBA are the same thing.
The Marlins have played it fast and loose with competitive integrity for a long time now. (They’ve also won two World Series.) And it’s totally worth exploring whether there behavior has been in bad faith, unethical, or even contrary to the rules (esp. re: revenue sharing). But this angle with “trying to lose” and Rule 21(a) is just bad.
Re: Trading Machado – the Orioles DID deliberately make their team worse in the present and ALSO traded a present asset for future assets. Those things are not mutually exclusive.
At the most, they **knowingly accepted** the likely–but by no means guaranteed–impact on their 2018 win total (1-2 wins). That is very different from “making themselves deliberately worse,” which is obtuse to the point of willful misrepresentation. Even in a relatively low-stakes context like a baseball article, willful misrepresentation gets my hackles up.
There is no argument whatsoever that trading Machado, for the package they got, made that team worse for the remainder of this season. I happen to think it was a smart trade from a long-term perspective, but that doesn’t mean it also did not make their team worse right now.
You’re right, of course. It did make them worse. And of course they knew (or, let’s be precise, they reasonably supposed) it would make them worse.
I object to the language that ascribes intent to it–that suggests that being worse was somehow the aim of it. That’s what you have to do to make it theoretically subject to Rule 21(a).
But even then, there are grey areas. At the time of the Stanton trade, everyone agreed that the Yankees gained in talent in exchange for taking on his salary. And that the Marlins would be worse as a result.
Except right now Baseball Reference has Stanton with 3.4 WAR and Castro with 3.3. So what appeared to be a pretty straightforward “tanking trade” at the time, didn’t have much effect on how many games the Marlins won.
I agree with you.
Thinking about this particular “deal with the devil” example from Ring, I think there are two differences: that the Orioles do receive future value (which you cover well) and also that she elides the difference between “certainty” and “probability”.
On the latter point, to me there’s a clear difference in kind in sports between a mismatch where one team winning looks overwhelmingly probable (even with both teams putting forth a good effort to win) and an actual fix where one team’s players or manager/coaches are actually trying not to win during the contest itself. Going back to Ring’s earlier post on this topic, I think that was a key of why the Mark Cuban anecdote bothered people so much. Cuban was relaying that he’d said to some of his own team’s players, at a dinner, that “look, losing is our best option”. If that message is being relayed so directly to players or coaches, it really does call into doubt the basic idea that two teams are competing to win during a game, however lopsided a mismatch might be on paper.
An example that helps clarify the difference in my mind is the common practice of powerhouse college football programs scheduling some of their non-conference games against far lesser teams where Alabama (or Ohio State, etc.) will be an overwhelming favorite (and gets an extra home game from the arrangement). There’s some sense of the shorthand being that the powerhouse is writing a six-figure check to schedule an easy win. Alabama, for example, was a 36.5 point favorite against Arkansas State (of the Sun Belt Conference) last Saturday.
No one really doubts, however, that a heavy underdog such as Arkansas State is trying to win during the game itself. There’s a very big difference, which strikes at the heart of the idea of competition in sports, between “scheduling Arkansas State knowing that we’re overwhelmingly favored” and “cutting a check to Arkansas State’s coach so that he agrees to lose the game against us”. The actual probability of Alabama winning the game only moves a few fractions of a percentage point, because it’s such an overwhelming favorite already, but there’s a difference in kind between the two scenarios. To reiterate, Ring’s “deal with the devil” example confuses the very real difference between those two scenarios.
“and arguably attempted to lose for financial purposes”
Nah, they didn’t attempt to lose, they attempted to pocket money. The test is if a meddling wizard made them win anyway, would they be happy (pocket the extra gate receipts too!), or would they be sad (the reverse Major League, back to Cleveland).
They attempted to pocket money, but the vehicle of choice was a deliberate attempt to worsen the team in both the present and future. The interesting part about Rule 21 – and arguably, it’s biggest flaw – is how exceptionally overbroad the damn thing is.
“Deliberate attempt to worsen the team…”
This wording makes an assertion about intent which is unfounded at best and deliberately obtuse at worst. Your insistence on this skewed language–when so many more objective or reasonable alternatives are available–is what is at issue here.
“…in both the present and the future.”
I mean, on what basis are you saying they’re deliberately trying to be worse in the future? Because the prospects are struggling? And to what end? What’s the financial benefit to being terrible?
Do you think the Wizard of Wins would make them sad?
Look at the 2×2 matrix of win/lose crossed with spend/profit. The Marlins choose (profit, lose) over (spend, win) when those are the only two cells accessible. If they had the full matrix accessible, that’s when you see whether what they want is money, losing, or both.
It is only your interpretation that is overbroad in regards to tanking. Rules of jurisprudence would require you to attempt to apply a reasonable interpretation, where possible, to avoid the result that the rule is overbroad. Here, the rule relates to effort and individual game results, so it can be reasonably narrowly construed to avoid application to long-term strategies or decisions about rosters, lineups, and pitching changes. It’s not about who plays, it’s about how hard they play and not manipulating the results.
The rule is overbroad, however, in another aspect. A player that fails to catch a foul ball on what would be the final out of the game because he slows down to avoid crashing into the foul wall at 100% speed technically violated the rule by deliberately reducing his effort to win.
Haha, I couldn’t help but think of Major League when reading this.
I think we can all agree that the fictional Rachel Phelps was in violation of this rule based on her intent, and she would deserve to be persecuted despite the results of her team, who won the pennant in miraculous fashion.
To suppose that anything anywhere near this fictional scenario is occurring in actual front offices is ludicrous. Teams do not deliberately intend to lose. The losing may be a product of their deliberate attempt to best position themselves for future success, but that product, as obvious as we may think it is (and often we are wrong), does not constitute intent to lose.
I just can’t buy that the rule was ever intended to reach budget cutting for financial reasons. It is written in somewhat binary terms, but in practice there is a wide range of effort that can be invested in winning games. As long as they do not do things with the goal of losing, but with the goal of saving money, I don’t think it applies.
Well said, and a comment from aschrag83 to Ring’s original post on this topic echoes your first sentence with more detail.
Quoting that comment: “This is pretty weak… the title of the subsection is ‘Misconduct in Playing Baseball.’ It says *playing* baseball, which is something that occurs on the field during baseball games, not in front offices during the offseason. “
The point everyone seems to be missing that Sheryl is trying to make (I think) is that yes, the rule wasn’t INTENDED to reach that – but as written, it does. That’s what lawyers do – they analyze what the rules ACTUALLY SAY.
Yes, Doug is right; this is the point. 🙂
The problem is that you derive the order out of thin air. The Marlins didn’t cut payroll in order to lose. There is no evidence of that, and it makes not a lick of sense. They cut payroll and the result was a worse team. Thus, even in the over-broad reading of the rule where it applies to seasons, there is not a causal connection here. Reading the rule to say that you can’t cut payroll if it will hurt your team is absolutely bonkers. It’s in line with that horse story from Britain that you referenced a few weeks ago.
That’s incorrect. Lawyers are confined by the actual language but are permitted to consider intent and public policy.
The rule specifically relates to any single game. Thus, a lawyer cannot advance an interpretation of the rule that says tanking is okay if it is an attempt to win future games but not if it is financially motivated because such an interpretation is directly contradicted by the actual language, which does not permit less than best effort in any game.
In contrast, an interpretation that requires the people actually chosen to play an individual game are required to give their best effort and allowed to do so without outside interference (other than player substitutions) is consistent with the actual language of the rule and properly implements the intent.
I think most would’ve agreed that the Rays made themselves worse for the rest of season at the trade deadline by trading Chris Archer, and that the Cardinals made themselves worse by trading Tommy Pham. By this logic, could we have agreed they were “tanking”?
Most would have been wrong, of course, as the results have indicated. The Rays are 33-17 and the Cardinals are 33-18 since the trade deadline.
I think we need to curb the rampant conspiracy theories surrounding “tanking”. The rise of “super teams” has been far less evident than has been exaggerated (See: Nationals, Cubs and Dodgers). Teams have a right to rebuild, and even in cases where we think they are doing so grossly and deliberately to intentionally lose games in the short-term, we’re not always right (See: A’s, Braves and Rays).
I dunno, I thought this was an article about how over-broad “fail to give his best efforts” is as a standard of conduct.
Maybe I missed the part where Ms Ring says that tanking is a clear violation of Rule 21(a). What I read was an attorney spinning out hypotheticals to test the limits of a poorly written rule.
I see nothing that suggests this rule was intended to apply to personnel decisions. It’s about the quality of play in individual games.
If it did apply to personnel decosions, all tanking would violated The rule says you can’t try to lose any game, period. There is no except allowing you to deliberately imoair the chance of winning any given game because it will help win future games.
If it did apply to roster/lineup decisions then pitch counts would violate the rule, as would playing aging veterans on albatross contracts that are chasing career milestones instead of releasing them.
Also, what about overweight players or players that party late one night before a game and don’t get enough sleep. Again, I don’t think this rule applies because it isnt about preparing for the game, it is about playing it.
Actual violations would be deliberately striking out, a manager calling for a bunt with two outs and a slow runner at the plate, a team turning on/off air conditioners to try to keep their own fly balls in the park.
The GM is a person “connected with a Club”. Making decisions that are not “best efforts towards the winning of any such baseball game” is a clear violation of Rule 21(a).
This isn’t hard. The rules require everyone associated with a team to do his or her best to win every single game.
Sacrificing wins now to increase the chances of wins later is simply not permitted.
I don’t have much interest debating the minutiae of the legalese, but I do think it’s worth pointing out what all sports franchises of large professional leagues do in practice.
No one plays to win every game, or every season, nor are they expected to by league bylaws or governing bodies. The overarching goal of every team is to win the set of all games (or seasons) within a certain time window in which success can be reasonably well predicted. Sometimes that means getting every out, or winning every game (postseason or playoff hunt), but mostly it boils down to maximizing the length and quality of a competitive window, whether it be now, or three years from now.
This philosophy has been accepted and practiced for as long as competitive sports leagues have been an economically viable industry. The only difference in recent years is that the methods have been much more transparent and publicly known than in the past.
I think it’s also important to distinguish between “trying to lose”, and “not trying quite as hard to win right now”. In baseball particularly, I would find it very difficult to believe that any front office or ownership group would actively root for their own team to lose on any given night. Even the most cynical interpretation of a “bad” ownership group doesn’t expect that the team signs/drafts/promotes players for the sole purpose of losing every game; just that they refuse to pay expensive talent. It’s only cartoon villains that rage over an unexpected win by their talentless team.
Teams horde draft picks/slots, bonus pool money, years of pre-arbitration control, and self imposed financial flexibility limits as currency to buy wins. Selling talent is what nets those assets, not racking up big numbers in the L column. Even a team that truly is being cheap for the sole purpose of netting revenue sharing money does not profit from losses.
It’s also worth pointing out that we are talking about a private entity deciding how to enforce their own rules against their own organization. If the franchisees, trade unions and contractors have no argument, then what is the purpose of this exercise?
The notion that the Marlins are acting purely from a narrow short-term financial interest in trading away their star outfield is not persuasive. This is true for several reasons: 1) There was no clear path to an above .500 record by keeping these players, namely because the lack of organizational depth was so extreme that the club would simply repeat what it had been doing for the past 8 seasons. Therefore the logical and necessary baseball move was to load up on as many prospects as possible. Some will pan out and some won’t, but you need lots of them. 2) The new ownership has increased the international scouting budget and has added five analytics specialists to the front office, which is part of an overall effort to build the entire organization from the ground up on a different set of principles from the previous regime. 3) The new ownership has convinced some of the best baseball minds that helped build the current foundation of prospects for the Yankees to work for the Marlins. It’s doubtful that they would have made such a move if they did not think the team was trying to build a consistently winning franchise. This year’s draft reflected the new thinking of the new regime, and may well be the best draft the team has had in a long time. Time will tell, but there is no reason to think, without adequate evidence, that the lead owner of this new group, Bruce Sherman, is capital deficient. Whether or not they add payroll when they move into a more competitive window will be the test.
Ms. Ring, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.