It's professional baseball. The object is to be paid to win games. MLB has implemented the luxury tax, the rule 5 draft, and compensation drafts, as well as using a draft lottery now to detour tanking.
The thing is drafting amateur players for professional baseball is about the most unpredictable speculation that there is in professional athletics, and even drafting professional players from the international leagues, even the really high quality Nippon League in Japan, is speculative.
So, it is hard to draft enough talent, develop it, and get it to the MLB team in time to compete for titles. The Rule 5 draft was intended to help, but many said it would hurt, and I agree. My view is there should be a limit to how many players one team can have drafted in any Rule 5 draft. Also, I think any team that failed to make the playoffs should have their entire rosters immune from the Rule 5 draft.
The players are mostly to blame for this. They are the group who pressed for a reduction in the renewable contract lengths, the implementation of the Rule 5 draft, and were adamantly opposed to any salary cap. All of these moves may have increased player salaries, but all of them certainly were a detriment to balance of competition.
The situation is highlighted by what is expected to become the worst regular season finish since 1900, with only the 18th century's Cleveland Spiders finishing with a record worse than the 2024 Chicago White Sox likely will finish with.
J
