Tony Clark now says ‘upwards of one-third’ of teams aren’t trying their hardest to win

With dozens of free agents still on the market for teams — including upper-tier players like Jake Arrieta, Lance Lynn, and Mike Moustakas — evidence continues to mount that something isn’t quite right this baseball offseason. But we know that. We’ve sure talked about it enough by this point.

How much is really enough when it comes to this topic though? Tony Clark hasn’t hit his limit yet, as he once again reiterated his opinion about what’s going on during a media session with reporters and players at Joker Marchant Stadium, Detroits’ Spring Training home. Clark, once a Tiger, was again not afraid of calling out the teams in the league for their apparent lack of effort.

According to the Detroit Free Press Clark said of the current climate,

“When you have a historical number of free agents on the market, when you have a historical number combined with the quality of the free agents on the market, it begs the question as to whether or not there is an interest across all 30 teams to be the last team standing. And to the extent that we are in a climate that that does not appear to be the case, it is a concern.”

Putting aside his misuse of begs the question (I’m sorry, pet peeve) this is as clear as the point has been made thus far. It’s calmer than most people (and even Clark in previous instances) have brought up the subject but lays out a very really concern.

More specifically, he said “upwards of one-third” of teams ”not as interested in being the last team standing” right now and while that seems like a drastic number in theory one look around the league proves that it’s not as outlandish as it sounds. Surprise, teams don’t care about spending money to win right now.

He let the Tigers off the hook though, at least for now. However, Clark did say “we’re going to continue to watch what they do, both in the near future and moving forward as a result” so Detroit isn’t completely off of his radar. As the regular season grows closer, these sentiments are only going to grow stronger. With Tony Clark continue to bang the drum.