In all sports, we keep looking for ways to get teams to stop tanking. Why aren’t more teams going for it? There are a number of reasons with the competitive balance Tax one of those policies standing in the way.

Under the current iteration of the CBT, if you spend over $210 million, there’s a tax or penalty. The more years you go over it, the worse the penalties.

For the first year, it’s a 20% penalty for the amount a team exceeds the threshold (or cap). It goes to 30% in year two to 50% in year three. If you go over by $20 – 40 million, there’s a 12% surcharge. Over $40 million, and you start losing draft picks?

At some point, you need to ask why? Why is this good for the sport?

We know, or at least are told, it’s in place to help the “poorer” teams compete. They get some of the money, and the bigger market teams can’t blow them out of the water by having their spending unchecked.

Of course, as we see with the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays, being smarter has always trumped reckless spending. Really, spending by one team doesn’t prevent the other teams from competing or winning.

That said, spending does help you win. Getting good players makes you better. That costs money in free agency.

We should want teams trying to get better. That’s a good thing. The bad thing is the system is set up to fight against that.

Case-in-point, if you dip beneath the threshold, your penalty clock is reset. Basically, a team is told you get two years to really go out and do all you can to win before you need to reign it back in.

That’s not a measure aimed at winning. It’s a measure aimed at not winning. If it was working as intended, fine, but there’s a reason the Pittsburgh Pirates are always terrible.

So, if we really want the competitive balance tax to stop building dynasties, and we want other teams in the mix, why not recalibrate the tax? Why not make a system easier for teams to build winners while preventing great teams from becoming unbeatable?

Instead of making the tax applicable to teams who just spend, why not make the tax applicable to only teams who win? In essence, make the tax applicable only to teams who make the postseason.

By doing this, you’re really narrowing in on the behaviors MLB purportedly wants to stop. It also doesn’t impact teams trying to build a winner.

Really, not doing it this way makes the name of the tax a misnomer. It has nothing to do with competitive balance because it isn’t designed to impacting competitive balance. Rather, it’s nothing more than a thinly veiled player salary suppressor.

In the end, this lockout should have MLB dedicated to finding ways to make the product better. They need to better tie the methods to buttress smaller market clubs to actual competitive balance. This is one such measure.