The pros and cons of baseball stars not being able to blow up their teams
Inspired by true events!
Yesterday, after months of James Harden demanding a trade from the NBA’s Houston Rockets, the NBA’s Houston Rockets traded Harden to the Brooklyn Nets for, uh, a lot. Here’s the tweet:
There was more in the deal that came out afterwards, but this isn’t an NBA newsletter so I’m not gonna bother. Suffice to say that James Harden, a basketball superstar, forced his way off of a team on the decline and onto a team that is ascendant.
Baseball players don’t have that kind of power. But would it be good if they did? Let’s look at the pros and cons!
Pro: People could work where they wanted to
All drafts are immoral. Imagine if you, personally, got selected to do your dream job someday. Good job, you! Then you get told that you’ll have to work your way up through several lower levels of your dream job. Hm, all right, you can prove yourself, sure. And then, your great reward, if you make it, you get to spend 6 years in Minneapolis.
You don’t know anyone in Minneapolis. You have never been to Minneapolis. The team in Minneapolis is good right now, but by the time you get there, they might be awful, and then you’ll be stuck in this city you don’t care about playing for a team that won’t contend for a big chunk of the best athletic years of your life. This system is awful!
What if, instead, you could choose where you played? You could have your agent assess every team, find the ones that valued you the highest, and pick the situation where you felt the most comfortable. Wouldn’t that be better? Of course it would! Just like you, personally, should have the option of where you want to work, so should a professional athlete. This isn’t hard at all.
Con: Then half the league would be absolute crap to watch
Of course, if everyone wants to play for the Yankees and the Dodgers, then only the Yankees and the Dodgers will be worth watching. If a huge percentage of baseball’s biggest stars were able to force trades to a limited number of already good teams, well, what happens to the rest of the league? They become the Pirates. They all become the Pirates.
This is not ideal. Think about the Blue Jays, who a few years ago had a relatively normal rise and fall. They’d been bad for a while, then they drafted some nice talent, hit it big on a trade for Jose Bautista and the free agent signing of Edwin Encarnacion, and eventually went to two straight ALCSes in 2015-2016. Now imagine that in 2017, with Encarnacion already off the team, they get off to a slow start and Bautista — who in this scenario is still extremely good instead of declining like he did in reality — goes, “Nuts to this, this team sucks. Get me the hell out of here.”
Why, as a fan, would you watch that team? How would that team ever be good again if every Jose Bautista could just say that the team isn’t good enough and he wants to get out?
Pro: None of that is too different from how things operate now
But on the other other hand…so what? As things stand, teams are good and then bad. A lot of them are objectively not worth watching. If that suddenly became a player-driven process instead of an owner-driven process, well, what’s the difference to the fan? The team still sucks and the person with the power to make it less sucky — in one scenario management, in the other labor — is choosing not to.
Does it matter in the big picture to Houston Rockets fans whether James Harden or the Rockets GM was the one who destroyed the team? In terms of placing blame, yeah, maybe. In terms of actually watching enjoyable* games, no, not really. The team will now be worse in the short term, and while in the long term the pieces they got (and all the draft picks) might well be worth it, well, that doesn’t make them better now.
This is a common cycle throughout sports, no matter what kind of power the players have compared to management. Giving more power to the players in baseball will not change its existence, so why not have a process by which they could go where they wanted?
*assuming they enjoy James Harden’s brand of basketball, which is no sure thing. I sure don’t! He’s great but super boring and awful to watch!
Con: It just seems kinda insulting?
Like, I’ve come up with the rational case that I pretty much believe for why players should have more control over where they play. It makes sense to me. They should. It’s more moral and wouldn’t make the league worse.
But imagine Buster Posey demanding a trade out of San Francisco.
He and his agent could couch that in all the kind language they wanted, but it would seem like it was shitting on the Giants organization and the Giants fanbase. It would seem like those three World Series were won by someone who was just doing a job, instead of someone who was putting his heart and soul behind a team and a city that he loved. It would seem like he never really cared.
In other words, it would give away the game. Sports are inherently irrational, and we convince ourselves they have meaning through a lot of little lies. The players really care about the fans, for example, or, There’s something special about this team. Maybe, These games say something about character.
All horseshit. Some people are better at throwing and hitting a ball than other people and that’s what we’re rooting for. But in the moment, it’s more than that. In the moment, it matters. It’s important. It’s a test of character and will and resolve. And a longtime player, an icon, opting out is telling us, “Nah." It never meant what the fans thought it meant. The fans might be in it through thick and thin, but the players aren’t, which makes the fans feel like suckers.
But on the other other other other hand, it seems to be working fine in the NBA. Sure, the Knicks will never actually be good, and the league is full of afterthoughts, but it’s still extremely popular and every fanbase has some path to contention within a few years mapped out in their heads.
It just seems wrong, though. Maybe I’ve spent long enough in MLB’s system that I can’t imagine a different one, but giving the players all that power will lead to really unpleasant consequences. Of course, giving owners tons of power isn’t working out great either, is it?
Okay, so on the other other other other other other hand…