Sometimes MLB teams just never learn.
In a league with no salary cap and massive television deals it can be tempting for teams to go on a spending spree the way a 16-year-old does at the mall on a Friday night. Especially when the team feels like it is just a few players away from contending.
Expectations for binge spenders soar as much as their payroll. Then by the following June it all falls apart.
With that I present the 2016 Arizona Diamondbacks.
A team on the cusp? Check. They still had Wild Card aspirations in August before the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs ran away with the two spots.
Still needing big improvements? Check. They were 13 games out of a playoff spot.
Television deal? Big check. In February 2015, the Diamondbacks signed a 20-year, $1.5 billion deal with Fox Sports Arizona, which CEO Derrick Hall told the Arizona Republic was a "game-changer."
It seemed so simple: Wheel and deal for big-name players, and the team can start thinking about printing playoff tickets. And did they ever go crazy on acquiring players.
Zack Greinke's six-year, $206.5-million deal to go to the desert was the off-season's largest signing. The team made classic win-now, who cares about the future trades for starting pitcher Shelby Miller and shortstop Jean Segura that sent away three of their top 10 prospects, according to Baseball America, and promising outfielder Ender Inciarte.
Surely, these moves will push the up-and-coming Diamondbacks over the edge, right?
Let's first look to the previous season to predict how things might fare for Arizona.
The Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox and San Diego Padres each spent more than $100 million and traded for big name players after the 2014 season similar to how Arizona did after 2015. All three finished 2015 the same way they finished 2014: With losing records.
If the Diamondbacks had not spent the entire time texting and day dreaming through their lesson in baseball history class, they might have seen throwing money around does not make a bad team great.
But, alas, they did. And now, they are the latest victim of this spend big to build a team trend.
Greinke has gone 9-3 with a 3.75 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and 7.6 strikeouts per nine innings - in other words, only his WHIP is above the "Wandy Line" ESPN Fantasy analyst Matthew Berry created in 2011 as a way to compare pitchers to Wandy Rodriguez, Berry's most average pitcher in baseball at the time. The Miller trade has been a disaster. He is 1-6 with a 7.09 ERA and is currently on the 15-day disabled list.
The Diamondbacks gutted their farm system and shelled out more than $200 million to be a fourth place, 31-39 team.
Tony La Russa should have taken notes.
This is not to say spending for improvements does not work. John Lackey and Ben Zobrist are each providing dividends for the Cubs this season, and even though Jason Heyward is disappointing on offense he has been great in the field.
But the difference between the Cubs and teams like the Diamondbacks or the Padres or the White Sox is they were already good. The Cubs won 97 games and made it to the NLCS last season, with a large part of that run being fueled by young, mostly home-grown talent. Heyward is only hitting .234 with four home runs and 24 RBI, yet the Cubs still have scored the third-most runs in baseball. The Cubs can afford to have Heyward struggle because their players are good enough to make up for it; that can't be said of the Diamondbacks.
Same thing happened last year with the Kansas City Royals. They had the best record in the American League when they made all-in trades for Johnny Cueto and Zobrist. Kansas City did not need to make those moves to be a World Series contender.
The Royals, like the St. Louis Cardinals, Pirates, San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers, New York Mets and the Cubs, have had recent success because they used free agency and trades to supplement a core of players they developed.
Other MLB teams who will finish with a losing record, pay attention. Because there is a reason you lost more games than you won, and history shows big signings and trades are not an elixir to be a winning team.
As for Arizona?
Disappointing season after making big moves to turn a bad team good like other teams before them? Check.