I'm the culprit who sat Rodriguez/Smoltz/Mondesi on the farm team. Although I was shopping those players and preserving IP/PA, I readily admit to tanking. It's good for all of you...here's why:

In an ideal sim world, every team would enter the last series of the season within a game or 2 of .500. THAT would be the thing that would preserve interest on the part of most owners the best. DISINTEREST is the killer here, not tanking. Look, the "problem" with tanking is that it artificially affects other teams, right? So is it "unethical" for an owner to abandon a team? Why don't you try to legislate aginst that? I took over my realtime team in December and it was a freakin' mess! My predecessor had drafted poorly, traded Edgar Martinez for Scott Karl and Justin Thompson for Javier Vazquez in the second month of the season, and then abandoned the whole thing. You think those actions didn't affect the competitive balance of the league? C'mon, you just can't see them as readily as you can see tanking.

I'm all for playing by the rules. If, when I was considering taking over the Senators, there had been a rule saying, "we'll penalize you if you try to get into the rookie lottery by tanking," I might not have done it, and you might still be left with an abandoned team. Instead, you got a VERY interested owner who shook things up, made some trades, and by the way, recently swept a series.