For a long time, most baseball fans just assumed tanking would never be a problem in Major League Baseball the way it has been in the NBA. It always seemed that there were too many factors and too much development time standing between prospects and success for a team to risk the strategy. But then the Houston Astros made the playoffs after one of the worst — and cheapest — stretches in baseball history.
It was like a bankrupt, old-fashioned business owner torching his establishment in order to invest in a tech startup with the insurance money.
The success of the Astros' unorthodox plan presents a few questions:
Did Jeff Luhnow reinvent the wheel?