Sick of Tanking

I, and many others in my camp, have received a lot of grief lately for beginning to voice the opinion that this grand "Cubs Way" plan executed by the Cubs' current front office is misguided at best and a joke at worst. As of the end of tonight's most recent loss, the Theo Epstein era has resulted in a .386 MLB winning percentage.

People who claim to have a view of the big picture will tell us that the Cubs have increased their farm system ranking from consensus bottom 10 to consensus top 5 in that time frame. This is indisputably true. The Cubs have more talent in their minor league system than they've had in a while. However, the issue I have is that it's not that difficult to increase the talent in your system when you lose games a lot at the MLB level. It gives you more high draft picks, more international spending money, and more incentive to sell off anyone on your major league team who has the audacity to not suck. Pretty much anyone can increase the talent in a minor league system if they make absolutely no effort to win games at the MLB level.

So why, then, did Tom Ricketts shoot for the moon and go after Theo Epstein, one of MLB's most famous and successful general managers of all time from his time with Boston, to run the Cubs as team president? If the plan could be summed up as "You know that thing where the Astros are tanking seasons? Let's just do that for a while and get more talent," why hire the guy once known as Boy Genius to do it?

The answer to that is unclear, although there's text from an interview running around somewhere (I tried but could not find it) where Theo Epstein gushed about how, when they were both in Boston, he and Jed Hoyer (now the Cubs GM) would muse about the idea of eschewing free agency almost entirely and building a contender with only homegrown talent. For people like me who are sick of losing, this discussion is a little worrisome with the knowledge that through 3 offseasons, Epstein and Co. have made exactly one long-term free-agent signing - pitcher Edwin Jackson (4Y/52M). Jackson outperformed his peripherals most of his career and is now underperforming them (and doing so in spectacular fashion, I might add).

Anyway, one of the pro-tanking crowd's favorite go-to arguments is that the Cubs' farm system was a gaping hell-hole when Theo and Co. arrived to save us with three consecutive 100-loss seasons. (The funny thing is, every year the Cubs suck under Theo, the more terrible the Cubs' system apparently was when he got here.) While it's true the system was in lamentable shape, the school of thought that the only way out of it was to tank is, in my opinion, flat-out wrong.

Don't take my word for it. Check out this selected list of teams who had bad minor-league systems and bad MLB teams in the same season in recent years, only to rebound quickly and have success.

2010: Arizona Diamondbacks. Arizona lost 97 games in 2010. DeepLeagues.com ranked their farm system 28th. The following season, Arizona, despite the fact that they hadn't tanked any seasons, won the NL West. They're terrible now, of course, but that can be largely chalked up to a bevy of stupid deals that new GM Kevin Towers has made, shipping out Justin Upton, Trevor Bauer, Adam Eaton and probably several other good or talented players I'm forgetting.

2011: Oakland Athletics. Oakland lost 88 games in 2011. Baseball America ranked their farm system 28th (12 spots BEHIND the Cubs' system that was supposedly so bereft of talent) going into the season. The A's have won the AL West the 2 seasons since then, and are projected to do so again this year by Fangraphs. They didn't tank any seasons in the interim. They did trade Gio Gonzalez after the '11 season for a collection of talent that's helped set the stage for their run.

2011: Baltimore Orioles. Baltimore lost 93 games and held the 21st-ranked farm system according to Baseball America that year. The O's made it to the playoffs the following year and were a solid team in 2013, with 85 wins. No tanking involved.

2012: Cleveland Indians. Cleveland lost 94 games in 2012. Fangraphs tells us that the Tribe's farm system was third from the bottom in baseball that year. The following year, bolstered by some shrewd moves and new manager Terry Francona, Cleveland made the playoffs without tanking any seasons. Early returns on 2014 are mixed with an 11-13 record, but the AL Central is mediocre enough that Cleveland can still expect to be in the race all year if things don't go south.

That's four examples just from the last four off-seasons of teams, none of whom are big-market squads that can erase mistakes by spending out of them, who had bad years and had bad systems - all worse than the 2011 Cubs' system that was supposedly so empty - and did not tank any seasons, yet got better quickly with smart moves and some luck. (In the case of Arizona, quickly undid that improvement with stupidity.)

And by the way, early returns are pretty good on the 2014 White Sox, who haven't had a decent farm system in a gazillion years and lost 99 games a year ago. It is, of course, only April, so we'll see, but they're threatening to add their names to this list.

Look. I'm not saying that Theo's Tankapalooza plan won't work. It probably will have some success just due to sheer volume. I'm also not saying it's necessarily all his fault. There's been a lot of chatter that the Cubs' frugal ways of the last few years have had a lot to due with a complex (and stupid) debt structure the Ricketts took on as a condition of their purchasing the team.

What I am saying is that I don't think Tankapalooza was necessary, nor do I think it was becoming of a guy who supposedly was Boy Genius (and did a lot of talking about 'dual fronts' and building a winning organization AND a good farm system at the same time). Those who tell you the Cubs had to do this are creating a false choice. The Cubs didn't have to be bad. They chose to be. And while the Cubs might hypothetically be good in 3 or 4 years due to that, it's very not hypothetical that they blow chunks right now. They've blown chunks for years. And there's no clear end in sight right now. And that really, really sucks.