“I want to win and I don’t see us winning in the foreseeable future. I want to go to a World Series. That’s what all players want. Rebuilding is not a lot of fun for any veteran guy.”

Tanking is the easy way out for baseball executives. Any moron can do it. But even the ultra-competitive Tony La Russa, chief baseball officer of the Arizona Diamondbacks, admits this odious tactic makes sense under current market conditions.

“How can you second-guess an organization?” La Russa said during his media session at the Winter Warm-Up. “If you finish third, fourth or fifth and you don’t have a realistic chance in your opinion to finish first, it’s tough to sell anything to your fans. If an organization makes the judgment that it will get younger and win more later, I think you have to respect that.

“If it only happens once in a while — and I think it’s only once in a while that more teams may look to the future — then I don’t know how you change it.”

The Diamondbacks have enjoyed just one winning season in their last seven, but La Russa and Co. saw an opportunity to contend this season. So the team rescued former Cardinals pitcher Shelby Miller from the tanking Braves by sending a massive prospect package that rewarded Atlanta handsomely for deliberate failure.