Our first MLB Monday of the new calendar year looks at the professional baseball draft, because it’s just as stupid as the NBA salary cap. We also have the Houston Astros to thank for this, as long before they became the Trashstros and shamed the sport, the franchise in the Top 10 TV market that had never won anything decided to tank for several seasons in a row so it could get the No. 1 pick in the amateur draft repeatedly.

[This is why we can’t have nice things in America anymore: corruption, deceit, fraud, and greed. Yay!]

From 2011-2013, the Astros won a combined 162 games, bottoming out with just 51 victories in 2013. Which players did they get atop the draft in those subsequent years? Shortstop Carlos Correa (45.7 WAR), pitcher Mark Appel (bust), and pitcher Brady Aiken (bust). Yet they had drafted outfielder George Springer (42.3 WAR) the prior year with the No. 11 pick, so by the 2015 regular season, Houston was in the postseason.

It serves them right that the two pitchers never amounted to anything, demonstrating again that just because you cheat it doesn’t guarantee success, yet the Astros were able to succeed for a variety of factors relating to their 2011-2013 tanking efforts on top of the sign-stealing garbage they pulled off to win the World Series—the first MLB title in the team’s history, dating back to 1961. See how this works, folks?

But we digress: as a result, MLB changed the draft rules, so the worst team is no longer guaranteed the top pick the next year. Houston’s subsequent success—eight straight playoff appearances from 2017-2024—just demonstrated that some franchises cannot be trusted to do the right thing in competition. Now? The screwy rules give a .500 team the fourth pick in the 2026 MLB Draft … a Top 10 TV market team. Convenient.

Every pro sports league seems to have its draft issues, from the NBA’s seemingly rigged lottery to NFL draft-trade shenanigans over the past decades. But putting all 18 teams that don’t make the postseason into a lottery is just stupid—unless the league wants certain teams to get a jumpstart to improved TV ratings. Take the San Francisco Giants with just a single playoff appearance in the last 10 seasons: they sure got “lucky”!

They’ve fallen so far behind the Los Angeles Dodgers that MLB could be trying to do anything to make the Giants relevant again. Likewise, the Chicago White Sox won the lottery to get the No. 1 pick, a year after finishing with the worst record and getting just the No. 10 pick afterward. The inconsistency of these results based on little more than a lottery really demonstrates a lack of transparency when needed for TV ratings.

Because of Covid, it took professional baseball until 2023 to counteract the Houston tanking scheme, and MLB just made it worse, really. It’s really a shame when something needs to be done, and the powers that be just screw it up: sound familiar? Of course, it does, especially when money and profiteering are involved. As we always say, follow the money. Thanks, President Nixon—you really left us with the best lesson ever.