Ahead of what is likely to be a lengthy CBA negotiation and slow free agency, it is Scott Boras’ time to shine. The most famous agent in baseball had a lot to say, but one quote, in particular, will irk the Braves faithful. He blames tanking as the only reason Atlanta was able to bring home their first title since 1995.
Scott Boras said MLB has been the victim of a “competitive cancer” and that the Braves’ World Series title was a direct result of tanking.https://t.co/dCSdegD3FY
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) November 10, 2021
Boras’ argument centers around how the Braves were able to flip their season around at the trade deadline because so many teams were willing to sell, which he calls “tanking.”
“It created an incentive for the race to the bottom, because now we have half the major league teams at some time during the season being non-competitive, trading off their players, making the game and the season very different than what it was intended to be, and that was having an incentive to win every game that you play,” Boras said.
That’s not exactly tanking; that’s how every sport works. And there are plenty of teams that went out and made moves at the trade deadline that didn’t have the same success; just look at the Yankees and Dodgers.
The ironic part of the entire thing is that Boras is making this statement because he wants teams to spend more money, driving up price tags for free agents. However, the real problem here is baseball’s lack of a hard cap, allowing teams to spend boatloads of money and create unfair competitive advantages. The only way for smaller market teams to compete year after year is if they sell their best players to replenish their farm system. If baseball wanted to fix this so-called “tanking,” they’d implement a stricter cap, but Boras surely doesn’t want that because it would hurt his clients.
The fact of the matter is Alex Anthopoulos made all the right moves. He went after players that nobody was interested in; saw a vision that nobody else did, and it worked to perfection.
—
Photo: Kiyoshi Mio/Icon Sportswire
You must log in to post a comment.