Good discussion guys. Thanks to all for chiming in.
Tanking definitely happens enough to be an issue gotigers17. I wouldn't wager a guess as to what % of dreadful teams are that way on purpose, but it's enough for it tio be an issue for sure. Especially when you see owners who have multiple WS titles running teams that lose 110+ games for three, four, five seasons in a row.
There is simply a dfference between doing the best you can with what you have (lack of talent, old geezerly husks, not much payroll, etc.) and *trying* to lose. Often the smoking gun is a 30 y/o player at AAA who is much better than the High A caliber, non-prospect, player a guy is using in the Majors. Tjat's not an honest effort. As I've pointed out before, and pajammies recently mentioned above, there are real life repercussions to tanking that do not exist here. Can you imagine the long term damage to its fanbase a team in real major sports would suffer if it wasn't perceived to just be rebuilding, but actually trying to lose as much as possible? Not to mention whatever penalties it's league might place on it.
I compare and contrast the other Dynsaty games. In my experiences and from what I can tell still, there's really no alias issues and no tanking issues there. It is in large part because there are no rewards for losing on purpose because there's no draft, and aliases can't trade even if they wanted to. I realize that's beause those games replicate college sports and HBD replicates pro baseball, but the point is still interesting to ponder.